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!

All Users Rating:

Comments (0) | Permalink

I drive a lot of people crazy about new media.  I get an idea or see something cool going on and I say, "Hey, we should be doing something like that."  I do it because it's changing the way all of us do business. 

Of course, we all live in a multi-tasking, hyper speed world ... and not everyone gets enthused about each new project.  But this one - the new GrowYourBiz blog - well, it was easy to get people to sign on.  When word got around that we were setting up a blog about Kodak's GCG and building a site for customers and Kodak employees to be able to exchange ideas and information, the response was overwhelming - people jumped in and said they'd contribute. 

They want the chance to share what they're thinking about what's going on in the business.  Might be their point of view on a new technology.  Could be a question they want to ask about what's going on in the marketplace.  Maybe they went to a conference and want to share what they saw.

Like me.  I'm posting this message from Dusseldorf on the opening day of drupa 2008. It's great coming to events like drupa. I love talking with customers, and seeing old friends.  Lots of shop talk and I usually pick up a lot of new ideas.  I want to hear more of what our customers are thinking and doing.  I want to be able to stay in touch on a weekly, daily or even hourly basis.

So welcome to GrowYourBiz.  Internet communities are not just for fun anymore, they're a place to discuss the meaningful aspects of our lives, business and it's future.  Don't leave us hanging.  Speak your mind.  Ask questions. Disagree.  Tell me to go eat a Meatball Sundae.  Whatever you do, participate.  We can have fun at the same time that we learn some things that may help all of our businesses.

What do you think?  Let me know.

Kevin

All Users Rating:

Comments (2) | Permalink