Sideshows Draw Crowds at drupa

In European terms, drupa is a “trade fair.” Given the size of the event, that is really a more accurate term than “trade show,” which brings to mind American-style conference centers of limited footprint. While vendors at shows here in the States do relatively little do bring attendees to their booths, those at European trade fairs often have their own sideshows to attract an audience.

At Landa Corp, for instance, the first five minutes of the highly produced presentation on Nanography had skin-suit-clad performers doing a dance that didn’t have much to do with the topic at hand, but was still visually engaging. Just one example of some of the eye-candy that’s expected at drupa.

Far more spectacular was the Cirque do Soliel performance at Xerox’s stand. Cirque’s troupe of acrobats wowed the audience with astounding aerial moves several times a day on a raised, springboard-equipped stage. It was part of a deal Xerox’s services organization has with Cirque to handle much of its back office IT work, not an insignificant task for a global performing arts organization that’s presently putting on 21 shows on six continents.

Once the Cirque show was over, Xerox seemed consistently busy focusing on its new iGen 150, the CiPress solid Inkjet press, and an innovative automated inline finishing option that enables documents to be produced on one press and finished on another. Basically, a bar-coded cover sheet for a given job contains all the job info. When the output stacker from say, a Nuvera 144, is moved to an iGen with inline finishing modules, the finishing for the Nuvera document will automatically take place on the iGen’s back end. The finishing equipment can also be near-line, completely unconnected from a print engine and work the same way. This is a solid productivity move, and although it’s so far just for booklets, Xerox says more will follow.