Questions for Chicago
My three stories from IPEX (Birmingham UK earlier this year) were unfortunately right at the end of the English news website for OhmyNews International. They did get about 1000 views each and were included on Google News but they were not edited or checked out. On previous occasions the headlines were often changed.
Graph Expo in Chicago is about to happen so I will experiment with writing news at a distance. I tried this once before for Ohmynews and it worked out ok. The three stories are around an event and background.
First event is a non-event. Adobe not there. Nor is Quark. So composition has gone. Page make-up seems to be part of document engineering that starts online and can also contribute to a print workflow in whatever format required. Adobe at IPEX found some space to talk about variable data in PDF. They seems not to have a stand but it will be interesting to hear if they turn up in some form. (Apple not there either, they stopped with drupa)
Second event, Heidelberg announce they seek a digital partner. Sometime in 2010. So there could be an announcement in Chicago. If not, someone should ask a question. I noticed that Xerox had a stand just next to Heidelberg and also shared some data. Both spoke about integrated workflows. Xerox could demonstrate detailed production information about each Heidelberg machine. If Xerox is not on the list of Heidelberg possibles then someone should check out both booths and speculate.
Third event is video. Kodak gave journalists (and accredited bloggers) a Zi8 to record inkjet. I cannot help but be impressed. Got the focus wrong to start with but the Zi8 is now working well. Also Kodak and Oce both had studios. A lot of video went straight to YouTube as well as dedicated sites. UK trade magazine Printweek also had some video recording but there has not been as much coverage of this since as I would expect. there was some discussion on the future of business to business publishing. Printweek continues in print as well as online. I discovered that What They Think is online only. Andy Tribute did not do much of a text blog at IPEX, he was talking to camera for What They Think. I will be checking out video next week. If the budget for video increases there could be less page ads in print. It may seem strange for a print show not to rely on print promotion but maybe it is a sign that a mix of communication options has been accepted. Print is still in there somewhere.