By
Pat McGrew, EDP
As Spring arrives in the Northern Hemisphere each year,
so do the agendas for a variety of user group meetings,
vendor advisory board conferences and industry-wide trade
shows. While we do not have the resources to cover every
offering, this year we can give you a look at the Pitney
Bowes Annual User Conference, the Dialogue User Conference
hosted by Exstream, and the co-located OnDemand/AIIM Show.
Pitney Bowes User Conference
The kickoff was the Third Annual Pitney Bowes User Conference
at the PGA National Golf Resort in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida,
from April 1-3. This year, the conference attracted twice
the number of attendees as last year. The newly consolidated
Document Messaging Technology Unit hosted the conference,
which was opened by the new president Leslie Abi-Karam.
Vendor
user group conferences can become nothing more than commercials
for the vendor products, but Pitney Bowes spent some time
and effort to build an agenda that exposed its customers
to industry experts in document technology and industry
research. Presentations from Pitney Bowes’ own experts
were intermingled with presentations from P.C. McGrew, EDP
of McGrew + McDaniel Group, Kemal Carr of Madison Advisors
and Jim Lundy of Gartner Group. There was also a panel hosted
by Scott Gerschwer featuring three Gartner analysts discussing
a number of information delivery topics.
The
general themes for the conference included the development
and understanding of Intelligent Documents, the technologies
and methodologies surrounding return mail and mail that
is Undeliverable as Addressed (UAA), and Document Production/Output
Management as a function of the automated document factory.
By
the end of the conference, the consensus of the customers
was that they had benefited from the experience. They had
a chance to share experiences with other users, get updated
information on product and service directions from Pitney
Bowes and learn more about the trends and influences that
will impact the industry in both the near term and to the
end of the decade.
The
Pitney Bowes conference was followed the next week by three
events: The Third Annual Dialogue User Group Conference
in Lexington, Kentucky, hosted by Exstream Software and
the co-located OnDemand/AIIM exhibition and conference as
the Javitz Convention Center in New York City.
OnDemand
& AIIM
OnDemand and AIIM came together for the first time this
year, with adjoining exhibit floors. While the conference
tracks were run separately, attendees benefited from the
chance to see common keynotes and meet a wider set of vendors.
Advanstar Communications, the producer for the show, says
that this co-located event drove more than $15 million through
the New York City economy.
The
show opened with a flurry of activity. In this case, that
included six inches of snow, which began falling mid-morning
and kept coming down throughout the day. How much that changed
attendance is hard to say, but there were airport closings,
rail delays and other transportation problems for anyone
trying to make it into the city on Monday morning. Those
who didn’t make it into town for the show opening
and the keynotes missed the presentation of the 2003 Isaiah
Thomas Award to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., chairman and publisher
of the New York Times Company. RIT presents this award,
which was sponsored this year by Xerox. Sulzberger could
have simply said thank you and departed, but instead he
delivered an acceptance speech that spoke to the information
delivery industry with a clear understanding of the challenges
of determining when to print and when to push digitally.
Sulzberger
was followed by Charlie Pesko, managing director of CAP
Ventures, the host for the conference portion of OnDemand.
Last year in his keynote, he admonished the audience to
recognize that paper was no longer the preferred medium
of information delivery. This year, he reiterated his message
saying, “Losing print jobs to local competition is
not the problem. The issue is losing print jobs to other
forms of business communication. Pages are moving to other
output options because of underlying industry trends. This
won’t change when the industry rebounds. It won’t
be business as usual.”
The
point was reiterated by the third keynote of the opening,
U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) Deputy Chief of Staff
Bob Tapella, standing in for Bruce James, the Public Printer
of the United States. Mr. Tapella provided amazing insight
into requirements placed on the Government Printing Office.
In his new role, he will be responsible for developing a
digital strategy for the GPO.
"The
future belongs to those who can securely manage information
content, repurpose that content for a variety of outputs
and revolutionize the communications effectiveness of their
customers' content," says Tapella. "Today, it's
content that matters. Information managers must provide
a complete solution for their customers to create, prepare
and manage content for both print and online distribution."
The
final segment of the keynote was the presentation of the
one-millionth Fiery Controller to its buyer, Kinko’s.
Selling 1 million of anything in our industry is a true
milestone, and EFI has certainly been a technology leader.
Beyond
opening keynotes, there were conference tracks hosted by
AIIM and OnDemand, and there was the exhibit floor. For
many attendees, there is as much education to be had on
the show floor as in the sessions. The OnDemand side of
the floor had a larger number of vendors and appeared to
have more traffic each day than the AIIM side of the floor,
which might suggest that commingling the vendors instead
of segregating them would be a better idea.
Last
year, we noted that there didn’t appear to be any
paradigm-changing offerings on the floor and bemoaned the
lack of attention paid to XML-compliant applications. This
year, XML was everywhere you looked. While it is still unclear
as to how and when XML will be integrated into document
delivery workflows, vendors are stepping up to the table
with offerings and enhancements that will allow them to
offer a solution as the various industry verticals hit the
need to exchange data in their infrastructures, which is
where XML becomes a key player. Everyone from Document Sciences
to Emtex, Exstream to PrintSoft, Group 1 and GMC Software
had offerings to help compose, migrate, manage, ticket and
enhance document development and delivery.
One
interesting offering on the floor had nothing to do with
document delivery, however. The folks at Captiva Software
were introducing their new Digital Mailroom offering. They
attracted a lot of attention, not so much from their offering
as for their Segue People Mover, which exhibit staff were
wheeling around the booth. We never heard who won the raffle,
but it was certainly an interesting technology demonstration!
Dialogue
User Group
At the same time OnDemand and AIIM were occupying Javitz,
the Dialogue User Group took over the Embassy Suites in
Lexington, Kentucky, for four days of seminars and education.
The folks at Exstream Software crafted a program that covered
the newest information on the Dialogue product, as well
as user implementation presentations and sessions from industry
experts.
The
well-attended sessions in Lexington revealed that there
are enterprises across the industry that have innovative
approaches to their document creation and management issues.
Many of them have taken the advice they have heard at industry
conferences and implemented document strategies. AFLAC discussed
their document library audit, which resulted in an 80% decrease
in the number of documents they now use and maintain. That
is an amazing feat for any organization!
This
year’s spring conference season continued to demonstrate
that there is a lot of expertise within the industry. Part
of the challenge for all of use who participate is to continue
to seek it out and learn from it.
Pat
McGrew is a frequent contributor to "document"
magazine. She is the co-founder of the McGrew+McDaniel group.
For more information about conferences and industry events,
visit our events page.
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