Several of us from Trekk were in Philadelphia last week for the On Demand Conference and Exposition. With the current economic conditions being reported by the media and contacts in the industry, I was very interested to see how successful this show would be. It turns out that even though attendance was down, the people who came are serious. They are looking for real solutions for real needs. Trekk came to attend and to discuss some of our successes with other attendees. We also saw many in the digital print industry begin to see the other avenues for them, including the areas of asset and content management and the use social media for business.

Booth Design 

In the digital print space, one of our close partners is XMPie. XMPie is a long time exhibitor at the on Demand Expo. As a division of Xerox, their booth is adjacent the large Xerox booth space. Last year, in addition to producing booth materials, we created a personalized video for the XMPie Experience Theater to demonstrate a complete cross-media campaign made possible by XMPie personalization tools. This year, we produced another personalized animated video that shows digital print providers how they can use XMPie’s new tools to “Open the Door to the CMO.” If you missed it, be sure to look for it at other trade shows this year.

Presentations 

On Wednesday Trekk’s Mike Frieri and Allison Rice of Amsterdam Printing presented a case study on large-volume personalized images in variable cross-media campaigns. You can find this case study on our site in addition to the presentation deck. One thing I like about On Demand is that most of the presentations are about case studies of real projects. Mike and Allison’s presentation generated a lot of questions about measurements, successes, challenges and lessons learned. While trade show attendance is down in every industry, these are the types of interactions that are difficult to replicate in other ways.

Late Wednesday afternoon, I gave a session presentation on advanced web-to-print topics called What to Do When Your W2P Application Grows Up. As expected, attendance was pretty slim, since this was the end of the day. But, for those who did attend, I think the interaction was excellent. I am to receive an audio recording of the presentation. When I do, we will synchronize it with the presentation deck and post it. Until then you can download the deck. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Show Synergy 

One thing I pointed out in my presentation is the need for asset and content management system integration for W2P applications. It's not a coincidence that On Demand and AIIM are shared trade show events. The AIIM expo is about finding, controlling and optimizing information, document and the business processes surrounding these efforts. On Demand conference and expo is about digital printing and publishing for print-for-profit professionals and corporate in-house and government print decision-makers. As time goes on, more people on both sides of the aisle are beginning to see the synergy between the two groups.

What's a TweetUp? 

One another note, there is a small but vocal contingent that is beginning to see the advantages of social media for business. I attended a Tweetup, or a meet up of Twitter users. It was organized by @XeroxEvents for AIIM and On Demand attendees. It was great to put a face and sometimes a name with someone who you just know via online activities. All who met up sees the power in the shift toward Twitter in particular, and in social media network communications in general. The question is, how will it affect print and all other forms of business communications. At Trekk, we think about these issues a lot. And we are constantly crafting strategies for our clients as newer media emerges as valuable tools. Will Twitter kill print, or the trade show industry? Not likely, but the mix of media will certainly change dramatically. All of these media need to be part of your cross-media strategy to get the best return on your investment that you can get.

Posted by JA Stewart at 04/06/2009 02:42:44 PM |