A bit more blogsearch and it turns out Heidelberg are not there. Some people have known this for a while. Cory Smith reported for PrintPlanet on the prospects for 2010 and headlined that both Heidelberg and Komori had passed on Graph Expo for 2010. Apparently the Heidelberg budget concentrated on IPEX for 2010 and they expect to be back in 2011. HP are on booth 1200 at the South Hall entrance. Cory Smith notes that  Komori "is much more active than most other offset manufacturers in the social media space, offering clues to some of the investments Komori might be making in 2010."


I do not know how Graph Expo has appeared in previous years but this lack of Heidelberg is impossible to compare to any IPEX or drupa that can be imagined. This appears to be a digital show. More next week.

Found this one on social media. I expect there are others. Video was definitely strong at IPEX. More searching during the week.

Australia shows the future for Heidelberg

At IPEX there was a view from Heidelberg that they would have a digital offer during this year. Not their own product but a distribution arrangement that would integrate production. All I can find on this topic is that Konica Minolta has a distribution agreement in Australia. This was arranged at IPEX.

Will there be a similar deal in the USA? At IPEX I noticed that the Xerox stand was very close to the Heidelberg stand and they both featured integrated workflows for litho and digital. The Xerox screens showed detailed production info on each Heidelberg device. Someone should check out the Xerox booth to find out if this is still the sort of thing Heidelberg supports.

As memory serves a Heidelberg announcement was indicated for sometime this year.  

Kodak could regionalise the Guardian guide.

I think this is so. Eric Owen says there will be an announcement in Chicago about working examples of the Prospect 5000XL. Could it produce an A5 stapled booklet such as the Guide in the UK Guardian? This has some national info and then a section in the middle with local info. I think it is just north and south. With inkjet there could be a dozen variations. I find the page sequence confusing as it is at the moment. Also I don't need to know any detail east of Bristol. Not being rude about Swindon but I am not likely to need the times of cinemas etc as I get at the moment.

For a while I have been posting to Posterous as a way to integrate various concerns. I raised some Questions for Chicago  as a way to report on Graph Expo. This might work out ok. I will try to find some solid links for my speculation. My assumption is that things are much the same as at IPEX a few months ago. The only recent development has been confirmation that What They Think is online only. this came out of IPEX World on LinkedIn where there has been discussion on the future of trade magazines. there seems to be no disagreement that business to business can be done online, including the buzz around a print show. Printweek this week, the print version that is, has a slightly different take. Jo Francis doubts the actual use levels for mobile devices and rejects the idea that "print is dead". The editorial has a more balanced view on print and the internet, claiming there can be "the best of both worlds".

So I have found some info on variable data in PDF. (based on a few clicks from Goole blogsearch, like most of my research) . Printing Impressions reported on Sept 20th that ISO has released a standard on variable data and PDF-

"ISO 16612-2 Graphic technology — Variable data exchange — Part 2: Using PDF/X-4 and PDF/X-5 (PDF/VT)" defines the PDF/VT document format and methods to enable reliable document exchange for variable data and transactional printing. Transactional documents include invoices, statements, and documents that integrate billing information with marketing information (TransPromo).

According to Tim Donahue of Eastman Kodak, document editor and chairman of the ISO TC 130 Task Force that developed the ISO PDF/VT standard, "The PDF/VT standard is based upon the result of rigorous examination of variable data and transactional print workflows and on requirements drawn directly from variable print practitioners. The members of the Task Force that created this standard included an international group of experts in variable data and transactional print workflow, digital printing, PDF, JDF, color management and high performance RIP technology." 

There is also support from Adobe. Naresh Gupta, senior vice president, Print and Publishing said

"We believe that this emerging standard will finally fulfill the promise of Variable Date Printing (VDP) and continue to drive growth of the digital print arena. Eco-systems based on PDF/VT and the Adobe PDF Print Engine will further streamline workflows and deliver more reliable, higher quality print results."

It will be interesting to see how much info comes from Adobe over the next few days. It appears there is no booth. At IPEX the promotion on the PDF Print Engine was lowkey. Perhaps they just have to reach the key people who design equipment. But there will be a new release of Acrobat sometime this year. Many of the knowledge workers who use Acrobat have no knowledge of the pre-press tools included such as JDF. My guess is they still won't know much about variable data way into 2011 and beyond. Will Adobe do much to educate the public about Acrobat 10. Maybe PDF is so well known that upgrades will just roll on without any further explanation.

I fear a rave is coming on. I will wait and see what happens during next week.