Charles Geschke found in the Great Lakes

http://www.greatlakesgeek.com/podaudio/bios/chuckgeschke.htm

Time keeps on slipping away. The most recent IPEX in the UK featured several "Champions of Print" but John Warnock and Charles Geschke were unable to attend. I got the impression from available sources that they had decided against much travel and were more or less retired. So one mystery is how they continue to be jointly chair of Adobe. Do they turn up at work very often?

A complication was that John Warnock did turn up in the UK for an honorary degree from the University of Nottingham. Maybe this was more interesting than a print show. His talk for students apparently dealt mostly with Flash and tablets, not much about hard copy.

Now through the magic of YouTube I find a video from the City Club of Cleveland. This would have been a great contribution at IPEX. The introduction recalls that Geschke was advised by his father not to go into the printing industry. But there is some continuity. The first Adobe business plan included some equipment for printing but this was dropped when the enquiries were just about software.

There were no questions about recent Adobe policy. I think there could be study of how Warnock and Geschke deal with business strategy. The decision to purchase Macromedia was an unusual move with respect to existing technology.

Now there seems to be another shift happening. This time Kevin Lynch is Chief Technology Officer but still with a focus on innovation.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/18/BU7Q1LVG9M.DTL&type=tech

Moving into the cloud with apps for tablets has some risks. My impression is that tablets are seen as close to a book or television, mostly for passive consumprion of content. There are not many examples yet of how they can be used for creaqting new work.

There is no counter information yet to my post yesterday about Adobe not beinbg at BETT 2012.

http://will789gb.posterous.com/will-adobe-be-at-bett-2012-this-january-apple

(my blogs are all over the place at the moment but there are some links)

Perhaps the trade shows in the UK will be noticed for what is not in the space as much as what can be seen. Adobe is now mostly in the cloud, rare in the UK. If Charles Geschke is still in the printing industry it is taking a new shape.

I am now a MOO affiliate.

moo.com

That should be the code. MOO supply business cards and other short runs of digital print. More when I check if this link works ok.

drupa blog comments on printweek move online

http://drupa2008.blogspot.com/2011/02/haymarket-morphs-printweek-online.html

posts will now mostly be on the drupa blog, 2012 coming up soon

This is a significant event. The hard copy version of Printweek is full of links to the website.

the LCC was clearly right to switch to communication as a scope of which print is a part.

London College of Cross Media has no ring to it somehow

Printweek is moving more online, details later this week.

The print version that arrived on Friday has an editorial about how print is changing. Also magazines. Fortunately  Printweek already has an excellent website. So some adjustment will not be too hard. There has already been much study of how the Printweek readers use the website. Apparently there are some who still read the paper version but not online. So the actual print version as it arrives this week will be interesting.

In 2009 Haymarket closed the  print versions of Revolution and Media Week, putting more energy into Brand Republic as a website. Paidcontent reported that the merger of Printing World with Printweek was part of a related restructure.

Recently the Guardian Media page had an interview with Rupert Heseltine that suggested a print based publishing operation could be in decline. However the same sort of thing could be said about the Guardian. At least Printweek is taking a decision and explaining a strategy to readers. Guardian editorial continues a rich mix that includes a fair proportion of print journalists still worried about how social media can rot your brain etc etc.

The future Printweek will strike a fair balance in a view of current media.

On another blog, will789gb for Posterous, I have written about "an English sputnik moment" - the time when a shift happens because it is thought to have already happened somewhere else. It could be that IPEX 2010 had some influence when the What They Think video stream worked so well. Printweek did have some video at the time but it seems not to have been updated recently. Maybe this will change as part of the new approach.