The hardest type of trade event to work is one where you set it all up and no one comes. I can promise that is not the case for Kodak at drupa. Our booth is among the busiest in every hour from opening through closing.

This morning as we were coming in we marveled at how quiet it was. There is an eerie silence to a trade show hall before everyone arrives and only early booth workers are quietly going about getting machines started and restocking collateral and sample areas.

I took some time to take a good look at the Kodak booth this morning. So many people had commented out how great the booth looked and how easy it was to navigate. Each one of the galleries spotlighting Kodak solutions looked great. The Packaging, Publishing, Digital Printing and Data Printing Galleries were each designed to speak to their markets and have been very successful in communicating our solutions-approach to growing the business. The Unified Workflow Hub is a great area to see all of the possibilities for commercial workflows, and serves as the nerve center of the south side of the booth. When you see it set up in this format it brings a whole new perspective to the discussion.

Between 7:30am and 8:30am the din slowly increased until the morning pre-show briefing where we learned that our sales colleagues have been very busy closing deals. We all want more, but Day One looked quite good. As the congratulations were being conferred the 10am signal - "one World, One drupa" announced the start of Day Two.

One of the side benefits of a major show like drupa is that we get a chance to meet Kodak colleagues that we have only known by phone or email, and we have a chance to see many of our customers and industry partners. While meetings over the phone and internet help us get amazing projects completed, it is always great to meet the people we work with in person. I find that I'm always looking at the name badges of every Kodak colleague to see if they are someone I have met through email.

Today was also a steady stream of familiar faces from the press, corps of analysts, and even vendor partners and competitors. It takes a lot to get the attention of the press and analysts at a show like this because everyone wants them to come and write about them. Most of the people who came to the booth today have already written about what we have, or will do so in the near future. We're excited because the press and analysts are excited!

One thing is clear. Everyone has heard about Stream - our paradigm changing inkjet technology, and they want to see it. Hundreds of people have made it a point to be sitting in the booth for the presentations each half hour, and they stay for the entire presentation.

Here is how we all sign in each morning.

The Digimaster is getting a lot of attention during the show, so this picture is taken before the doors open for the day.

Before the show opened you could actually see the Magnus Platesetter.

Tomorrow I'll start the walk around the booth to talk to the segment and product areas. Stay tuned as the excitement and sizzle continues...

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We unpacked boxes, pulled off miles of shrink wrap from carefully crafted print samples, and arranged our areas to show our solutions at their best. Briefings on logistics (moving more than 300 people daily is not a small challenges), products, messaging and goals are behind us. At 10AM Thursday morning the lights came up, the "one World, One Drupa" song played over the loudspeakers, the doors opened, and armies of excited customers ran to our booth!

OK, maybe not armies, and maybe they didn't run... but drupa is now open for business and hundreds of people have come through our booth in Hall 5 on this first day. And, there really is a drupa song called "One World, One Drupa" that plays at the beginning and end of each day. (Here the song at the official drupa website)

From my vantage point in the Data Printing Gallery the goal for this piece of the booth is to educate and inform our customers and prospective customers about the power of data-driven printing, I am working with my colleagues Olivier Zwartjes and Federico Martella who provide support for the European languages I do not have and experience in selling inkjet solutions. Eric Wilson, Will Mansfield, Marie-Luce Delaune and many other members of the IPS sales and marketing teams have jumped in during the day, as well.

Speaking of vantage point, we did encounter one small problem as we were getting ready for the show. Perhaps you can tell of this picture, kindly taken by Olivier. I am 5 feet 1 inch tall. The top of our gallery bar came up to my shoulders. Solution? The fabulous team responsible for many more important things arranged to have a platform built that sits behind the booth so that I appear quite a bit taller!

So, how did Day One look? Fabulous. Each half hour there is a performance in the digital arena that covers the key technologies we've brought to the show: the new NexPress S3000, the KODAK VERSAMARK VL2000 InkJet Solution, and the two Stream Concept demonstrations. The first is a monochrome Stream printhead mounted on a rail system that is incorporated with a Mueller Martini Concepta offset press. This is the first of the Stream products and will be available later this year. The star of the show, besides the presenter who roams the arena on a Segway, is the Stream Concept Press, printing at high speed in full inkjet color. It's the future of digital printing, and its right there in front of everyone!

As I come to the end of Day One I find that I am still as excited tonight as I was before we opened. I'm looking forward to tomorrow and the next thirteen days of meeting with current customers, prospective customers, and those who influence them. My feet may have another opinion!

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By now you may have heard some rumblings about Kodak's new Stream technology from industry analysts or press releases. You may have heard that it is the only new inkjet technology that will be demonstrated at drupa. And certainly there have been statements discussing where Stream fits into the print continuum in relation to offset printing. All these things are very good, but what do they really mean to you?

Let me start off by saying that I am relatively new to Kodak and Stream myself, having been with the company just shy of one year now. While my time with Stream is relatively short when compared to many fellow Kodakers, I have witnessed many impressive strides in its development. Image quality is the primary focus area of my work in the research and development of this technology. These are important footnotes to put my perspective into context.

Now let's back to the question of what this all means to you. To be completely honest, I think that Stream offers many impressive promises that make it possible for the technology to mean something different to everyone. Yet no matter what benefits you find the most compelling, there are likely key capabilities offered by Stream that serve as the foundation for those benefits. Glossy commercial substrates, striking image quality and detail, unsurpassed productivity. You will be able to witness these capabilities on the Stream Concept Press at drupa.

So what importance does my time with Kodak have in this discussion? When it comes to things like glossy substrates and image quality and productivity, I have seen such strides in just one year that it is impossible to not be excited by Stream. Images have been printed on both the Stream Concept Press and offset presses and when you put them side by side it is clear we have a technology that can compete in commercial printing. You will be able to view such comparative samples in the Kodak booth at drupa. Take a moment to envision offset-class image quality off a digital press that will print completely variable data and it often feels like the sky is the limit for Stream.

I hope you have the opportunity to come to drupa and see the Stream Concept Press being demonstrated by Kodak to the world for the first time. While I cannot put words in the mouths of others, if I could step out and speak for the hundreds of people working on Stream I think there would be one common message. And that message is that we are all proud to be part of this promising new digital printing technology and excited to have the chance to share Stream with you.

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