CLINT BOLTE

TWO PREDICTIONS for the 2009 calendar year: Barack Obama will be sworn in this month as the 44th president of the United States, and printers will endure an even tougher year than they did in 2008. Sorry...with the economy being what it is, the editors at Printing Impressions can’t even afford to go out on a limb. And, when it comes to forecasting the fortunes of printers for the final year of the millennium’s first decade, it hardly takes Nostradamus to tell us that economic pressures will cast a heavy burden on printers in 2009.

TO PARAPHRASE a gag from the late, great comedian Rodney Dangerfield, “I went to Graph Expo the other day and an On Demand show broke out.” If imitation is really the sincerest form of flattery, then the On Demand folks should be downright blushing at the degree of digital technologies that will be offered when Graph Expo storms into Chicago’s McCormick Place South complex from September 9-12. Not that the Graphic Arts Show Co. (GASC), Graph Expo’s producer, is out to steal another show’s thunder; rather, it is only a telltale sign of the trend that is enabling printers across North America to

BY CAROLINE MILLER If there appears to be one technology that is going to steal the show at the eight-day PRINT 01 trade show held at Chicago's McCormick Place, September 6-13, it is going to be the digital imaging (DI) press. "No matter what you think about the DI press, pros or cons, you no longer can ignore the impact of DI technology. We've identified at least a dozen manufacturers that will exhibit a DI press, reports Bill Lamparter of PrintCom Consulting Group. The buzz surrounding color digital presses began last year at DRUPA and not much has changed since the German show.

BY CLINT BOLTE More than 650 vendors were represented in 575 exhibits covering 480,000 net square feet at Chicago's McCormick Place. Only a fraction of the estimated 46,000 in attendance at Graph Expo and Converting Expo 2000 were at DRUPA last May. But those that were may have been startled at the changes and progress of a number of the vendors in only a matter of months. Vendor coalitions, even among competitors, was the clear theme of this, North America's largest graphic communications trade exposition. The initial half dozen e-commerce hubs created much of last year's Graph Expo stir. The e-commerce caldron continues

BY CLINT BOLTE Representatives of the 43 member companies of the International Cooperation for Integration of Prepress, Press and Postpress (CIP3)—two companies joined during DRUPA—used this international venue as another opportunity to meet and discuss the evolving status of their efforts to develop integrated production standards leading to computer integrated manufacturing (CIM). Increasing anticipation in this meeting was evident due to two developments: the fourth "P" for Process to represent the new Job Definition Format (JDF), as well as the potential juggernaut of JDF versus printCafe's PCX specifications. Forged by Adobe, Agfa, MAN Roland and Heidelberg beginning nearly a year and a half