EFI Connect 2013

I was very happy to get the opportunity to attend EFI Connect again this year.  I am pretty sure it was my 10th time around, out of 13 years, of this very special industry event that began life back in the Printcafe era. Wow, time flies.  The very substantial turnout of customers, partners and EFI employees continues to make it an impressive event. Only The HP Graphic Arts User Group meeting, Dscoop8 will have a larger customer turnout in the industry this year. 

January was unseasonably cold in Las Vegas, but inside the Wynn at Connect, it was hot! For me, as a former employee of EFI, it was like reunion.  I saw so many colleagues and friends, it was great to catch up and find out what's new with products I was involved with during my tenure, as well as learn about the systems and technologies my industry associates are using to run their businesses.  The striking thing this year-- it was almost "mind blowing"-- was see all the new EFI employees-- many of whom I know, but not from EFI-- like Mark McGowan, the CEO of Online Print Solutions (OPS), and Chris Woods, from Technique. Both very well respected technology companies were recently acquired by EFI, and were attending their first Connect event as part of the family.  EFI has been on a major global roll acquiring MIS vendors over the last year and a half-- including Metrics in South America and Alphagraph in Europe, not to mention venerable Prism, which was more or less a "tent stake" if not a tent pole for the new acquisitions and brought back Filip Buyse (prior to Prism, he was VP at Printcafe) as GM of the Web2Print products. At Connect this time around, Filip was so busy with customers, I only got to briefly say "hi" to him!

Guy Gecht is an amazing CEO, and he can also be quite amusing when he wants to be--  always a source of great knowledge and insight. His fireside chats with industry luminaries have become the stuff of legend at Connect.  I've been thrilled to hear them in the past, and this year's talk with Benny Landa was amazing. An industry legend and the founder of Indigo (acquired by HP a little over 10 years ago), and now CEO of several new ventures, including a new printing press and ink company, LandaCorp in Israel, Benny is like the Steve Jobs of the printing industry. He's been personally involved in over 1,000 patent applications in his career, and a large number were granted. He brings a beautiful vision and a contagious excitement to the printing industry like no other individual, or company for that matter... although EFI and HP are both close seconds in this area. I've seen Benny Landa speak 4 times starting with, and including at drupa last year. The coolest part is that I have learned something new about the man, and what he is doing, every single time.  That's pretty rare.

Benny spoke of his childhood, telling an amazing story about his father's tobacco store in which the man and his son, out of necessity to make a living for the family, built a passport photography machine. Among other unique features was that it made an image positive on glossy paper. He drew a direct line from this machine to Indigo, over the course of a few minutes of a spoken history that I'd never heard.  It was very moving.

One funny part of the Landa interview was when Guy asked Benny about the importance of workflow.  Guy was obviously fishing for an EFI endorsement, but Benny said flatly, "You're asking the wrong guy."  Guy pushed a little bit, and Benny retorted, "Why don't you ask Udi?"  At that point, much of the crowd erupted in laughter, because Udi Arielli is so well know, and another terrific feature of Connect was his Automated Workflow Experience (AWE), which is an animated, interactive, but live narrated movie that Udi's "british-academy award" winning daughter helped him produce, explaining the importance of CIM and automation, and how EFI's products enhance and streamline printing operations of any shape and size, from end-to-end. 

Benny Landa is also well known for never hiring people who have hobbies.  He wants people whose love is the work they are doing.  Clearly, he's found success hiring such people!  Guy grilled Benny on his hobbies... Music? No.  Books?  That's my wife's department.  Movies?  Benny says, "I saw a movie once in the seventies... it was called 'Debbie Does Dallas', I think."  This brought the extra-curricular activities line of questioning to a successful conclusion, and also brought the house down! Classic, outrageous, iconoclastic. Guy Gecht is as sharp as it gets, incredibly fast on his feet, and this proved that he and Benny are cut from the same cloth.

Of course, perhaps the biggest attraction of Connect is the training classes.  There were more than 150 classes at this year's event. At trade shows, there are a few interesting seminars delivered by consultants, unfortunately often leaving attendees with more questions than answers. At Connect, you can send your people to get deep-dive training, and actually save money versus having an EFI trainer come in-house. Plus, with features like the keynotes, other outside speakers, meals and receptions, not to mention unparalleled networking, it has all the good features of a trade show, too.  Many printing company owners find it to be an amazing value and use Connect as a perk for top-performing employees. There were even a number of third-party vendors in attendance, like Kodak, Xerox, MGI, Ricoh and Esko, just to name a few-- MGI even had a digital press on the floor of "The Lab", which is the central meeting space of the event. Along with the annual golf outing, and Andy Booth's newer tradition of a bike ride up Red Rock Canyon, people actually got to step outside the ritzy confines of the Wynn, too. 

If you are an EFI customer, and haven't made it to Connect, you owe it to yourself and the future of your company to attend next year.

Upcoming: Automation Solutions Network in Minneapolis

The most recent meeting of the Printing Industries of America's Automation Solutions Network (ASN) was held this past February in Memphis and featured a tour of Mimeo, and after that, a once-in-a-lifetime late night tour of the Fedex Global Superhub, to watch "the sort"-- when all the packages get unloaded, sorted and loaded onto new planes and then start flying out. For printing nerds, Mimeo was probably the more fun part of the visit, but no one could leave the Fedex experience without being absolutely astounded!

ASN is a great industry user group.  It's a unique venue by virtue of the the presentations and tours, and just as important in my book, it's an unparalleled networking event for technical people involved in factory automation and integration projects. The group welcomes a wide range of users of JDF-enabled systems as well as the suppliers of those systems. The Automation Solutions Network steering committee includes printers who have implemented successful automated workflow systems or are in the process of doing so.  There's really nothing better than talking with a peer and discovering they have the same issues you have-- or conversely, they've already solved that problem and are willing to share the solution.

The next ASN meeting will be held in Minneapolis on September 18th and 19th, 2012. There are two very special parts of the meeting agenda that are great reasons for anyone involved in print technology to attend.

First, on September 18th, there will be a tour hosted by Japs-Olson. This legendary firm was founded in 1907,  and has steadily grown to be the worldwide leader in direct mail services and commercial printing they are today, employing more than 700 people in a facility that occupies more than 500,000 square feet operating 24/7.  The company serves global customers managing campaigns from a few thousand pieces to tens of millions. The company has long been a leader in creating and implementing automation applications to support their continuously evolving business.

Second, my fellow Dscoop Operations committee member Bill Wieners, president of Digital Lizard, will give a talk about his company's use of automation.If you've never heard Bill speak, I  strongly encourage you to sign up for this event.  Bill and I did a joint presentation to a full house at Dscoop7, the HP Graphics Arts Users Group meeting, this past March in Washington, DC. As Bill and I were planning our talk, it was startling clear how similar our approaches to automation are.  Even though Digital Lizard is smaller than Mimeo, we share many of the same challenges and have approached solving those problems similarly.But different! For me, there will always be more to understand about what Bill has done, and what's he's planning on doing next. And he's an engaging speaker.

Located in a remote corner of Idaho, Digital Lizard’s experience should make every company take notice. Their Web2Print software has allowed them to scale from 175 orders to over 400 orders per day. Automated workflows for production and back end business tasks have eliminated and reduced labor and streamlined processes. The company has 14 Indigos, and a variety of other devices and finishing equipment, but a surprising low headcount.  The company was recently purchased by venerable Creel Printing in Las Vegas.

There are only 40 spots available for the meeting.  I'm going to take one of them.  Sign up now!

HP Graphic Arts Users Group, Dscoop

I just returned from Dscoop7 in Washington, DC. This was the 7th annual face-to-face meeting of the Digital Solutions Cooperative, founded in 2005. Dscoop is the independent global community of graphic arts business owners and technical professionals who use HP Indigo and Scitex equipment and related solutions. Dscoop7 had over 2,000 attendees and more than 150 sessions. More than 90 vendors showcased their solutions in addition to HP, and we also had a pre-conference program for graphic designers this year called DSee, which was wildly successful.

I'm proud to say that the Operations Committee (of which I am the incoming chairman) was responsible for a track of 10 sessions over 2 days, all of which were delivered to full house crowds! Kudos to Mike Blanco (with GPA), our outgoing chairman who led our group into the conference and Amy Biedenharn at Dscoop HQ, who facilities our every move.

I put together two sessions for this year's event. My first session was a "201-level" panel discussion called Fine Tuning Web-To-Print: Implementation and Operation. We realized going into the conference that a lot of technical and operations folks already know the basics of W2P, because these things are becoming part of how we all do business. A lot of companies now run more than one system or are in their second or third implementation.

So we put together a panel of experts to discuss the challenges and opportunities and talk about the nuts and bolts of such topics as storefronts, cross-media capabilities, e-commerce, workflow and business system integration, variable data printing and customization online, hosting decisions and more.

I wanted to have representatives of all the great Web-To-Print solutions present at the event. Logistically-speaking, it's awfully hard these days to get technical people from printing companies to commit to speaking at events. Thanks to Leslie Wengenroth at PageFlex, the well known VDP and storefront vendor, we got Paul O'Brien, CTO of Acculink, a leading-edge printer in Greenville, NC to join us. I managed to round up a nice cadre of technical people from most of the solutions present at Dscoop7: Alex Boissezon from Pixfizz; Chris Young from XMPie, a Xerox company; Greg Salzman- CEO of Aleyant Systems; Steven Enstad- one of the founders of PageDNA; and Becky Schick from HiFlex, now an HP company as a result of their recent acquisition.

There was a time in the not too distant past when a panel like this would have seen the vendors bickering over small points and vying for the microphone to get the last word in. This panel was nothing like that, in fact there was much agreement on many points, little contention. These companies all have powerful solutions: Paul and I as the users on the panel could easily see the value in each of their products and technologies. In the recent past, software vendors had more of the approach that the marketplace was a zero sum game, and to win you had to squash the competition. This isn't the case any longer. Today, you must pick and choose among solutions that fit your target customer and market, and they must work together. That was the overriding message of the session. I had 3 pages of "seed" questions I put together in advance with the help of the panel. I only made it through a handful. We had fantastic audience interaction, many great topics arose. The session could have continued for the entire afternoon if the time had been available!

The second session I presented was called Printing is Easy, Everything Else is Hard (Workflow Automation), and was somewhere in between introductory and 201 level. I partnered with Bill Weiners from Digital Lizard, who is a kindred spirit and well known in the group. Digital Lizard is owned by venerable Las Vegas offset printer Creel, and while smaller than Mimeo, Digital Lizard is very advanced from a technology standpoint-- and they own almost as many Indigo presses as we do! Like Mimeo, they produce both documents on demand as well as photo products.

The premise behind the session was that when you have powerful equipment on your floor, printing is the easy part. The hard part is getting the work from the customer onto the press, tracking it throughout the steps in your operation, getting it finished and out the door, finally delivered and billed. The solution for many of these challenges lies with advanced workflow automation.

Bill and I presented case studies of the way we do things at our respective companies. We talked about key building blocks for implementing solutions to help our attendees streamline their operation, while improving efficiency, quality and profitability. This session was in the last time slot of the event on a Saturday afternoon, and I am happy to report that the room was completely full. Bill and I can't take full credit for the topic or the speakers being such an exciting draw-- it's just as much a product of the fact that the Dscoop audience is definitely the best and brightest, and most dedicated, group of printers in the industry!

There were many, many other highlights at the the event. Notable among these, the introduction of new HP Indigo Presses, the Indigo 10000, Indigo 20000 and Indigo 30000 the "biggest" among them, in more ways than one-- these new machines can print in the popular 29" or B2 sizes, and applications include commercial printing, labeling and packaging. There were many other announcements, including software upgrades and new workflow solutions. HiFlex was highlighted in a couple of sessions, and in the solutions showcase. I will talk more about the software aspects in an upcoming post.

Keynote marketer Sally Hogshead provided an exciting and fun kickstart to the event. It's the first time I've seen a Keynote presenter at an industry conference do a shot on stage! HP Indigo GM Alon Bar-Shany, presented a fantastic "state of the industry" report, with terrific insight. Bar-Shany paints a very good picture for adopters of the technology, and HP Indigo as an organization is well positioned to help printers capitalize on the opportunities ahead. Along with all the data, Alon pointed out that Dscoop7 began on March 22nd, which was the 10th anniversary of HP's acquisition of Indigo. Resting on the laurels of the past 10 years is not in the cards, though, as the company charges forward!

Even though Dscoop7 has just ended, I'm already looking forward to Dscoop8 next February in Dallas, Texas!

(photo credit Bryan Yeager, Associate Director, Infotrends, from pre-Drupa festivities at HP in Israel the week prior to Dscoop7.)

Breakthrough Open Source JDF Toolkit

Recently, On Point On Demand, a small company in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, did something none of the larger industry vendors have yet done. They took source code from currently relevant commercial software, and made it available as Open Source.

The company has several popular commercial products and is led by Tom Cabanski, who was previously a partner in the well regarded and pioneering JDF automation firm Objective Advantage. The products make for logical partnerships with Web2Print vendors whose print service provider (PSP) customers require back-end automation for an increased volume of work coming in from the web.

Commercial products available from the company include On Point Connect Shipping, which automates shipping via UPS, FedEx, DHL, USPS, company truck and local courier, is integrated with WebToPrint solutions from Aleyant Pressero, PageDNA, Printable nee PTI, and PagePath solutions; as well as On Point Symbio, which is a POD production automation system for commercial printers that automates many of the steps in the prepress, production, finishing and shipping process for POD jobs.

On August 5, 2011, Onpoint On Demand announced that it released its Fluent JDF for .NET toolkit as open source, "making it quick and easy for PSPs and ISVs to create valid JDF for client applications."

According to the company's press release, Fluent JDF is an "expert in-a-box, providing all the rules, syntax, packaging and structure to make JDF creation and delivery very easy for software engineers."

"We've released Fluent JDF under a commercial-friendly, open source license to make it easy for our customers and partners to create JDF client applications", stated Tom Cabanski, VP of Technology. "This is another way Onpoint On Demand is helping the industry take advantage of the power of JDF to build fully integrated supply chains that enhance productivity and profitability."

Fluent JDF is delivered as a .NET Library and is available for download at Microsoft's online open source repository CodePlex. There is some very "getting started" documentation, with good suggestions for new developers, and there is a discussion group (albeit, with not much activity since at this writing Fluent JDF has not been available very long.)

This announcement didn't get a lot of press coverage, most likely because many industry journalists don't understand what it is! Alas, in addition to this particular software being targeted at techies exclusively, this lack of real understanding has been JDF's problem in the PSP community for a long time now. Early on, it could be said that JDF wasn't actually useful; those days are long past (i.e., like 8 years ago at this point) -- JDF is SUPREMELY useful today. But it is hard to implement and still has a lack of understanding among printers as to the benefits and how to deploy (this, despite much work done on education by the CIP4 Organization.)

It's very much worth noting that a lot of the work and code samples that are available (such as JDF examples CIP4's own toolkit) are not coded for the .NET framework and since MSFT is the dominant player in the desktop and networks of most printing companies, this in itself creates a barrier to use.

Bottom line, this is a breakthrough development by little On Point On Demand. We haven't used the Fluent JDF software at Mimeo, but we are becoming a major JDF developer across our platform, and we are a .NET shop. A couple of our engineers took a quick look at Fluent JDF recently and told me that it looks like it could be very valuable. Stay tuned for future updates on this important development!

While we're on the subject of JDF, I should mention that Mimeo is hosting the Printing Industries of America's Automated Solutions Network meeting at our facility in Memphis, TN, next January. We're also in the process of arranging a tour of the amazing FedEX Memphis global hub for the same event.

From the Printing Industries - "The Automation Solutions Network has established itself as the premiere event to exchange ideas and solutions for JDF workflows. The Automation Solutions Network focuses on the development and practical implementation of JDF-enabled systems and cross-vendor implementations. The group welcomes a wide range of users of JDF-enabled systems as well as the suppliers of those systems. The steering committee of the Automation Solutions Network is made up entirely of printers who have either implemented systems or are in the process of doing so."