ZPD graphic not showing on Posterous

Came back here as Posterous seems to have lost graphics at the moment

See the rest of the blog HERE

Briefly, try BETT as a guide to IPEX

(Adobe has moved on from both)

Trade shows still part of Blended Learning @Bett_show @Ipex_World

(Posterous seems not to be working today. so this is reposted here. Maybe more cross posting later.Running 10 years late makes the point that this year could be as good a a couple of years into the future as an occasion to think about print in context)


Learning can be analysed by academics but is also part of normal life. The word has a simple meaning for most people. So a lot of things can relate in the same blog post.

BETT is a tech show. Now moving to ExCel, it was the last big computer show at Olympia. It continues even though teachers are using Twitter and soforth. I will know more about blended learning when the MOOC course is happening. The topic may come up at BETT. There is still some benefit in "real time and space". Feel free to discuss online of course. The people at BETT will have already decided to be there.

IPEX has also decided to move to ExCel from Birmingham. (ExCel is in East London not far from the Olympic Park) But the exhibitors are cancelling. Jeff Jacobson wrote in a Xerox blog -

In times of change and transformation, one is given the unique opportunity to look at things differently – to step out of the comfort zone and take a different look at how things get done.

http://digitalprinting.blogs.xerox.com/2012/12/4725/#.UO09QeR1GSo

which means that the stand is cancelled. In reply to a comment he added

 there are international trade shows, such as Hunkeler, which we will attend due to its continuous feed focus – an important offering to our customers and the industry. It is also our intent, at the current time, to participate in Drupa.

So drupa is looking strong as a special occasion once every four years. Heidelberg and HP have already cancelled for IPEX in 2014.

However there could be a gap around drupa for Cross Media Live, a show launched last year in Islington. This is intended to happen every year, more suited to the pace of digital developments. I hope this year that the Furures Conference organised by the London College of Communications will be at the same time and with nearby locations. But online this year is much like last year. The move from print to print as part of communication has taken decades. Print changes over centuries. So we can blog about LCC Futures 2012 as if it was 2013.

BETT though is to be considered day by day. I still don't know what Michael Gove has to say about it. Adobe will not be there, they   left most trade shows a while ago. The Serif stand looks interesting, volume licences for a suite of software once known as dtp.

Barney Cox interview, but where is Printweek video?

This is an interesting video. Excellent explanation on where Landa technology is heading. But it is branded as "Beyond Print" , presumably this is ok with eh drupa red sofa authorities. I think this is Barney Cox though. He is editor for Printweek, published by Haymarket in the UK. It appears that video on the Printweek website is mostly from 2011 When I was at IPEX in 2010 there was a lot of video and Printweek joined in. If magazines are gradually moving into tablets and other mobile devices then I think they will need some video in the mix. Looking on YouTube finds some WhatTheyThink but mostly video is on their own site. It can come from companies they interview. But I wonder where Haymarket is heading on the video front.

Apple and Adobe definitely not at drupa 2012 , at least so far #drupa

Beginning the second week of drupa ( yesterday was a rest day here in the UK ) theere is much to add to the drupa blog - http://drupa2008.blogspot.co.uk/ - about nanotechnology and augmented reality. But this is the spot to comment again about Apple and Adobe. I think it may have been at a drupa that Apple did not turn up. But I think some local dealers arranged a meeting of some kind. Adobe at IPEX 2010 was more or less not there in terms of booking space. There were some presentations on other stands. But the news item I reported was that John Warnock and Charles Geschke were noted as champions of print but chose not to attend. My conclusion is that for Adobe in recent years Postscript and PDF is just not that interesting. John Warnock was in the UK later in the year for an honorary degree when I think most of his talk to students was about Flash. Using Google search I still find just Datalogics when looking for Adobe at drupa. But what is more striking is the result for "drupa, Apple" -

“We are particularly proud of a 100-page coffee-table books sponsored by the classic sports car company Jaguar Eagle Speedster,” says Heather. “No ordinary book, the imagery includes candy apple red with high gloss and they are printed on the Pro C901 using a water-color fine-art paper and finished off-line.”

This is from a story about Ricoh and how to design print samples. The word apple is in there but if the company is anywhere near drupa it has not reached blogsearch at this time.

Continues on drupa 2008 #VIDEOdrupa

This blog will be updated over the next few weeks. But mostly there will be new comment on the drupa 2008 blog. No reason to change the titles just because of which year we are in. http://drupa2008.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/videodrupa-andy-tribute-starts-cloud.html By the way, the WhatTheyThink videos from drupa are public on YouTube, not restricted to subscribers. They may be very close to drupa as editorial policy but this may not make much difference. Seems fair and balanced so far.

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.

Print is not a featured feature of Acrobat X

So far I have had a quick look at Acrobat X information. It strikes me that there is no significant mention of print on this release. Strange, as the variable data capability of the Adobe PDF Print Engine is presumably supported. The interface has been redesigned again, possibly making it harder to find the JDF options in the print menu. Just a guess, i will come back to this when I have an actual copy. The reality is, in my honest opinion, that many users of Acrobat still relate to hard copy some of the time. Probably many more than are wanting to wrap existing PDF in a Flash presentation.

So a future task for this blog will be to find the print features and try to promote them. It may be that other software has more focus on this so there will be a comparison.

The best review I can find so for is from Tim Anderson. He has previously attended an Amsterdam meeting for Adobe partners and has also written on how Apple support is limited for forms features of PDF. The "Apple problem" for PDF is similar to the problem with Flash and could get worse if more PDF files include Flash content.  There is a sense that this release is intended to work well with Microsoft products. This could have been a topic during the recent meeting of Steve Ballmer and Shantanu Narayan. It is claimed that moving between Word, Excel and PDF will be even easier.

There is mention of improved collaboration from the Reader. So far I don't know how this is enabled or how widely it will be promoted. One reason the Reader is such a large file is that it has some functions of the full product but they are usually turned off. Many people have found other options for collaborating through documents. Adobe has continued to sell Acrobat to corporates but lost some attention from a wider audience.

Some videos from Acrobat TV



Lori DeFurio on SendNow, a news service from Acrobat.com. Not yet launched, more detail in November.



Brad Arkin on Security. More here about working closely with Microsoft. Some people claim that security concerns are a reason to move to open source.




Ali Hanyaloglu interviews Rick Treitman, Director of Product Management Acrobat Solutions Services.
The cloud is the future but there is more detail to follow.



Kevin Wedman and Kyle Froling of Bureau Veritas, a global leader in delivering quality, health, environment, and safety (QHSE) solutions, visit with Lori DeFurio of Adobe to discuss how enhancements in Acrobat X will further improve collaboration across their project teams, reduce administration costs, and bring greater control to complex engineering and construction workflows.



Joel Geraci talks with Tim Wandell of Universal Mind about his views on Acrobat X. It turns out that code options assume you already know Flash.

I will try to keep an open mind about the Flash future. But my main conclusion at the moment is that PDF support is coming from various sources and PDF may not be the main Adobe focus.

Graph Expo floor plan shows digital

http://www.mapyourshow.com/shows/index.cfm?Show_ID=GRAPH10

Top left is where the large stands are. From previous post HP is where Heidelberg might have been.
Canon close to Oce. Epson inkjet well placed for proofing etc.

This is a general purpose print event, just not much litho.

Blog search has found M-Bossed, they seem to be close to Chicago.

Apparently Ricoh has the advertising profile that Heidelberg would have in Dusseldorf.

The South hall is far from full but there is a lot of info on web and workflow.

Obviously I am still at a distance but I am reminded of Digital Solutions, a very small show compared to IPEX and no longer continuing. An annual event can keep up with technology, on whatever scale.

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.

My collection of video as Magnify - Printshow has been updated for FESPA. Here is a sample from Amsterdam last year



There are still a lot of clips I made from IPEX but this Magnify approach is working ok. It is fairly automatic based on keyword searching. But I do delete stuff and will add more for FESPA.

The print industry is making good use of social media, including video. This is good for the culture.

OhmyNews have not yet edited my stories on IPEX so here are links. I am exploring Exeter this week as a site for social media so need a place to show where the info is. I think IPEX 2010 made a lot of progress so there could be several connections in Exeter. Continues on blog for WiFi Exeter.

By the way, I have started a Posterous blog to collect brief links to most of what I write. It is an extension of email I think. So it may be briefer than some blog posts but there is more space than Twitter.

Print Show Zooms Social Media

Xerox Tips IPEX Digital Solutions Past Heidelberg

Adobe Classic Completes Messaging to IPEX

Also video on my YouTube channel

HP announce email to print. see Business Week and other reports.

Apparently ink for desktop printers is a large source of HP income. So the excitement of IPEX needs to be put in perspective.

Print is part of communications, as explained often during the talk around IPEX. Presumably HP support email to print service providers. But the case for this has to be made. It is not obvious from the reports so far.