Moving Beyond On Demand

Last week, I attended and was honored to participate in a panel discussion at the On Demand Exposition and Conference at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. Kudos goes to David L. Zwang and others for the very fine event offered. I doubt many people understand the difficulties in arranging a complex mechanism like On Demand, especially in, shall I venture to say, economic depressing times like today.

On Demand was co-located with the Publishing Xchange and info360, which is a good idea—comingling is nearly always beneficial.

I toured the show floor and spoke to many of the exhibitors and attendees and would make a single recommendation: it would seem in this world of converging media and endless demands, that the show’s name should change. I have a suggestion—CWYL! (For you SMS neophytes, CWYL means, Chat With You Later.)

The broad base level of exhibitors was notable for those within the printing industry that did not attend and those not from the print space that should have attended. This is by no means a fault of the organizers; it is just a fog-ridden time of understanding who is involved in the communication mix.

In fact, it is my belief that parallel industries should be seeking out events like On Demand; events like On Demand should not be seeking them. As Bob Dylan said, the times they are a changing.

Enough of On Demand the event.

On demand as a term has been driven home to printers and print enablers as being (years ago) the future. But what is the future now? We are living in a post-digital age. Everything is on demand; in fact, you can say that on demand is too slow for this fast-paced, ever-changing world of endless news coverage, endless story variations and, in many ways, an undefined compass heading into the future.