Orlando Visitors Take A Pragmatic Approach To The Future
Mickey Mouse has always been a damn good sport.
He didn't complain when the writers made him fight a big, ornery cat in "Steamboat Willie," his debut cartoon. And 60 years later, he graciously accepted an invitation to open NEXPO®, the annual exhibition of an industry that once spurned his creator.
'Pick any pressing issue in this industry, and we have some meaningful and effective work going on-color quality, processes, online classifieds, building the industry's image, readership.'--NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm |
That's right. As NAA President and Chief Executive Officer John F. Sturm reminded the audience at the June 23 NEXPO/ Marketing Conference joint session at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Walt Disney once wanted to be an editorial cartoonist. But the industry rejected him--on the grounds that his cartoons were not innovative enough!
One wonders: Has the industry learned enough about innovation in the succeeding years to master--or even absorb--the significant challenges it now faces? Newspaper executives took stock of their status June 18-24 as they gathered in a torrid Orlando for four major industry events--NEXPO'98, Connections'98, the NAA Marketing Conference, and the NAA Cooperative Marketing & Sales Conference.
On the technology side, this question was left hanging by some NEXPO attendees. In a post-show roundtable, some described the floor at the world's largest newspaper-specific production exposition as lacking in significantly new products.
"On a percentage basis, there was 1 percent new and 99 percent stuff that has been shown before," said consultant David Cole of The Cole Group in San Francisco.
Yet from a business perspective, this was an excellent NEXPO, one of the best in recent memory. Both the number of exhibitors and the amount of exhibit space were way, way up, as was traffic across the board (see "NEXPO Numbers").
"We have heard rave reviews from some of the heavy-iron people in the press and post-press areas," said Tom Shafer, director of production for Thomson Newspapers of Stamford, Conn.
"Several of the front-end vendors told me they had more pre-booked demos this year than they ever had, and others told me they had people there after 5 o'clock who wanted to continue looking at stuff," agreed Elizabeth Sholar, Thomson's director of publishing systems.
Little product innovation, but lots of exhibitors and potential buyers. What's going on here?
Three practical answers: the Year 2000 computer problem, the realization of "vaporware" concepts, and system integration.
Publishers are screaming for system technology that will effectively collect, manage and output content for both newsprint and the World Wide Web-technology labeled "digital-asset management." But Y2K has become a speed bump, and in some cases a major roadblock, on the on-ramp to the information superhighway.
"You're not going to hear a lot about digital-asset management until we get done with this Year 2000 thing," said Donna Conner, Internet and information-publishing marketing manager for Microsoft Corp. in Redmond, Wash.
Well, then, what about those new-media companies whose systems are already cruising the highway? Surely their engines were developed too recently to sputter over Y2K.
Yes, but they have a different problem--integrating print.
"I am still finding the folks on the new-media side kind of discounting the print side," said Sholar. "They say, 'Print is dead. We are going to kill it off.' But we obviously think print and the Web are complementary."
Meanwhile, rather than develop new technology, the vendors of pre-press and press systems have been concentrating on making their previously announced technology actually work.
Computer-to-plate, which made its first foray into newspapers at NEXPO'96 in Las Vegas, is ready for prime time. "It's here, it's real," said Shafer. "It is not just vapor any more."
Also, shaftless presses have not only arrived, but now dominate the market for new presses.
Chuck Blevins, chief executive officer of Blevins Harding Group of Boulder, Colo., reported, "It is not a question of, 'What is it?' It's accepted. The new thing is, 'What does it really mean? What are all the things I can do with it, and how do I use it?' That has led into a lot of activity about add-ons using shaftless; add-on units, add-on towers. Just a ton of people have shaftless."
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Visitors to MAN Roland's booth at NEXPO donned cyber-age headsets and took a virtual-reality tour of a press. The company also used the medium to convey its history of shaftless-press development. |
The final reason for this quirky, low-innovation, high-traffic show may come from the buyers' side. Many newspapers are more interested in integrating previously purchased systems than in buying new ones. The results are a booming market for system integrators and add-on vendors, and trends toward vendor alliances and consolidations.
Said Conner, "More and more, developers are saying, 'Now, will this work with that?' System integration, both from the newspaper side and the developer side, is something I am hearing a lot of this year."
Blevins saw the same trend in hardware. "A lot of booth space was taken up by integrators," he said. "There are six or seven companies offering press controls. How many were there four years ago? That is a new business that has come on very strong."
Bottom line: What the show lacked in gee-whiz innovations, it gained in substance as NEXPO attendees as well as participants at the other events acted to ensure the industry's vitality.
Said Sturm, "We are doing what might be the hardest thing for a mature, deeply entrenched industry to do: We are changing."
This Review spells out the changes on two fronts, newspaper production and new media, as observed in the exhibit halls and meeting rooms at both NEXPO and Connections'98.
Walt, we think, would be intrigued.