Posted on Tue, Feb 01, 2011
Can today’s printer professionals adapt to serve tomorrow’s Twitter based clients?
In the old days - maybe one or two years ago – most people wrote different than they do today. Today’s under 25 set seem to write with 140 character Twitterverse mindsets. This twitter land generation abbreviates, misspells and minimizes punctuation. However, they write more than any generation before them.
Some interesting questions arise out of this?
After you review this interesting Twitterverse article, please share your thoughts with me regarding the challenges and the opportunities that you see coming as printers try to adapt to twitter land.
Chenlong He
OutputLinks Youth-in-Print Analyst
Class of 2010
Posted on Mon, Oct 18, 2010
Part Dos: InfoTrendsPrint Plus and the glamorous Xerox cruise
Hello, my friends, welcome back. As I promised, I am going to share more of what I learned and experienced at Graph Expo 2010. If you have not read my first post, please click here for Part Uno.
After a great Sunday of browsing and visiting booths of great vendors like Cannon, Cannon-Océ, Fujifilm, HP, Ricoh, Xerox, and XMPie, I was ready to retire for the day. Andy and Julie Plata not only had introduced me to industry leaders like Bruno Henry COO of Sefas but also has enlightened me with important changes in the industry landscape.
Vanishing Offset Vendors
It was surprising to learn that Heidelberg, the world's leading manufacturer of sheet fed offset-printers had just three years ago taken a large portion in the front of the previous show, but was not present at Graph Expo 2010. Almost the presses in the front of the show are all streamline designed with automated and digital operation. Some even can do digital on-demand book printing such as the Xerox 4112 Copier/Printer with the Expresso Book Machine a.k.a the book kiosk, which can print, bind, and trim books.
Digital Software
Digital software is also an increasing trend of the tradeshow with more and more database software solutions made available to the printer. XMPie offers a suite of Variable Data software for both print and the web. For print, it is VDP (Variable Data Printing); for web, it is PURL (Personalized URLs).
InfoTrends InfoBriefing
Andy and Julie Plata kindly invited me to an InfoBriefing breakfast session at 7:30 a.m., October 4th, 2010 from InfoTrends, a market leading research company. The InfoBriefing was filled with around 100 attendees. I was introduced me to some prominent people from InfoTrends such as Barb Pellow, a director at InfoTrends. Right after a short networking period, Jeff Hayes, the President at InfoTrends started presentation by showing us the recession's effect on the printing industry. He encouraged printers to take action by getting involved in cross media marketing. He highlighted Joseph Merritt & Co, a printing company which lasted the hardships because the strong integration of cross media marketing.
After Jeff Hayes' interesting presentation, Barb Pellow then took the stage and walked us through some key marketing strategies employed by large corporations. Clinique, a prominent skincare and beauty company, integrated a keyword on their direct mail piece that the users can include in their SMS/MMS text message to receive a free gift. Why use text messaging? Well, first Clinique identified their costumer profile, and found majority of their consumers to be in the early 20's range. The one of the most frequented channels from this age range is cell phone texting. After users has texted the code, Clinique will ask them if they would like to further receive promotional alerts directly to their mobile phone. By including the text message on their printed marketing pieces, Clinique can directly market to their customers. Calvin Klein or CK uses QR codes or Quick Response codes to target their consumers. QR codes connect print to web by allowing users to scan the code via their QR reader on their Smartphone, which can decipher the code to generate the appropriate information not limited to URLs and body of text. This way, the user can directly interact with the print. Thus, it is not just printing. In CK's case, it is print plus QR codes.
Xerox Real Business Live
Right after the informative InfoBriefing session, we quickly made our ways to the Xerox Real Business Live Keynote presentation at 9 a.m. Eric Armour, Corp. Vice President and the President of the Graphic Communication Business Group, welcomed all the attendees and showed us a composite video clip on the keynote speaker, Bo Jackson. Baseball and football All-Star turned businessman, Jackson, in the flesh, suddenly appeared walked up the stage. He shared with us his inspiring childhood stories in Alabama that had prepared his success today.
Later that evening, we headed to Navy Pier for a fabulous Xerox Cruise. The cruise was complete with Jazz music, dancing, card games, delicious gourmet food, and the amazing Chicago night view! I had the chance to have dinner with Jacob Aizikowitz, the founder, president and CEO of XMPie. WOW!
As you can probably tell, I had a wonderful day and evening - and many unforgettable experiences - thanks to all the wonderful people in the print and output industry! I just wish all of my fellow university friends in graphic arts studies could have seen the industry as I did this day.
More about my experiences in the coming weeks. See you then.
Posted on Mon, Oct 11, 2010
Part Uno: Introduction
Hi, how are you? The reason you are reading this is probably one of the following:
Option 1. You are also a student interested in multimedia communication and the future of the previously mentioned industry.
Option 2. You are a subscriber\reader of the OutputLinks blog/newsletter (which if you haven't already subscribed, please subscribe because it will help you in your job! Scout's honor! )
Option 3. You also attended Graph Expo 2010, and loved every second of it.
Option 4. You are a senior corporate marketing professional managing highly personalized, interactive transaction and statement based communication.
Option 5. You are an HR person/ E recruiter checking up on me because you want to hire me for a high paying/ extremely lucrative job in the multimedia/marking business. (Hint: I graduate this December 2010)
If you are one of these above, I am confident that you will like what I have prepared in this and the upcoming blog posts. If you are option 4 and especially option 5 (wink wink), check out on my LinkedIn profile. Okay, I think it is time for me to formally introduce myself before you go off and start looking up/ adding me on LinkedIn, which I recommend you doing after reading this post.
Hello, my name is Chenlong He, and I am currently a senior at the University of Houston studying Organization Leadership and Supervision with direct emphasis on Graphic Communication.
So, why am I writing for OutputLinks? I am a 2010 OutputLinks Sponsors Scholarship recipient via EDSF (can't you tell that I'm very proud of it?). After I received my scholarship, I got in contact with my awesome sponsors Andy and Julie Plata (if you know them, then you know they are extremely cool/influential people of the industry). After our discussion they offered me an internship and that is why I am writing for OutputLinks.
Last month, EDSF kindly invited me to the Graph Expo 2010 knowing that I had never attended this event before. My experiences at Graph Expo and the EDSF Give back to Graph Scholarship Event were very enjoyable and very educationally enriching!
In this and my next few blog posts, I would like to take you on a virtual trip to share my experience and what I learned at Graph Expo. So, sit back and always put on your virtual seatbelt!
Getting There
With a bright and chirpy jingo, my cell phone alarm alerted me promptly at 6:00 a.m. Sunday, October 3. This time, I was not tempted to hit the snooze button. It was time to catch my 7:30 a.m. early bird flight to Chicago. I was not only excited to attend Graph Expo but I finally also got a chance to visit Chicago, the windy city. I quickly ate breakfast, got dressed, and made my way to the airport. After about two and a half hours, I landed at Chicago Midway Airport and took a cab to my hotel, the Essex Inn on Michigan Avenue. At my hotel, I noticed there is a beautiful park in front of the hotel called Grant Park and it is gracefully framed by a sea of modern skyscrapers. I was happy to learn that Grant Park is where President Obama had once made his speech.
Around 10:55 a.m., I got on the shuttle from my hotel to the McCormick Place. I was extremely excited and couldn't sit still on the bus ride. So, I snapped a couple of images of the beautiful and scenic Chicago, which I couldn't wait to share with my family and friends back home.
And Now - On To The Conference
Finally, I was at the grand entrance of McCormick Place. This large convention center has three main buildings, the South, North and West Buildings. The level 3 of the South building is where the Graph Expo is displayed. The 3rd floor features Exhibit Halls A1 and 2 which have a total combined space of 840,000 square feet (just close your eyes and imagine a football field). The ceiling even seemed like a mile high.
So, as you can probably visualize, this expo is hosted in a really large open space, and therefore it is a very good thing that I don't have agoraphobia. However, I must tell you, it was a pretty overwhelming sight for a first timer.
Large scale corporations notably Cannon, Cannon-Océ, Fujifilm, HP, Ricoh, and Xerox have displays and demos of their fastest and most efficient digital printers on the front of the show. Between all the large and crowded displays were some of the most expensive (and not very good) food venders I have ever seen (please don't buy the food there like I did. It was the only decision that I regretted on my trip).
Now that I have completed sharing my excitement about getting to Chicago and the Conference please come back to my future posts. I promise to give you a student’s perspective of your great industry and share my impressions of the technologies I previewed as well as the people I met with.
Goodbye my new friends and I look forward to seeing you on my next post.
Chenlong