Crossed My Mind

Julie Shaffer is Vice President, Digital Technologies at Printing Industries of America. She heads up the Digital Printing Council (DPC), as well as the Center for Digital Printing Excellence at Printing Industries headquarters in Sewickley, PA. In her position, Julie plays a lead role in developing programs and tools to help members grow their businesses with digital technologies.

Known for her graphic production expertise, Julie has a 20-plus year background in pre-media and print. She is often called upon for training, presentations and to provide on-site consulting throughout the industry on diverse range of topics, including PDF, color management, digital printing, social media and Web-to-print implementation. Julie is co-author of several books, including “The PDF Print Production Guide” (1st, 2nd and 3rd edition), the “Web-to-Print Primer” and the forthcoming “Field Guide to Social Media.”

So you have a LinkedIN account, a Facebook Page and a Twitter account. Now, do you know what your social standing is? Do you have Kred? Do you have Klout? Klout measures, as the language distorting name implies, your social “clout.”

The “cloud”—once the purview of IT geeks and software developers—has gotten personal. For several years, there’s been a movement to transition software from the desktop or local server to the cloud. One example is Web-to-print software, typically offered as Saas (software-as-a-service).

Some in the industry are already saying that this Do Not Track movement could drive marketers back to print—but it is naïve to think that this will happen en masse. The digital movement is a giant snowball rolling downhill and this legislation is not got to stop it.

While sitting around a table with a group of printers, I was hearing that business is starting to pick up after last year, but the commoditization of print is making pricing ever more cut throat.

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