Dscoop Asia 2016 has come to a successful end with Alon Bar-Shany, Vice President and General Manager, Indigo Digital Press Division, labelling it “the best Dscoop ever”. The two-day conference and networking event culminated at HP’s Centre of Excellence (COE) in Singapore.
HP Indigo products, which are distributed in Australia by Currie Group, were a highlight of the Centre of Excellence show floor, with plenty of customers checking out the latest and greatest Indigo presses.
Australian participation was lower at this Dscoop than in previous years, with only about ten attendees from Australia. Conference chair Kelvin Gage attributed this to the timing of the event, which coincided with the local industry's busy pre-Christmas production season.
“This is not the ideal time we’d like to have a conference. The end of November is busy from an Australian perspective, so we’ve only got ten people from Australia here instead of 30,” he said.
Gage is sure there will be a larger Aussie contingent to the next Dscoop US conference, which will be held in Phoenix, Arizona in March 2017. “What we really want is more participation from Australians to any event – US, Asia or local,” he said.
The Australians who did attend found plenty of value in the conference. Peter Bailey and Samantha Bailey-Jensen, from Bailey Visual Solutions in Brisbane, said it was a great learning experience.
“We’ve learnt a few things about business management, design management and production. All of those will be discussed when we return, and we’ll make changes to adapt to these processes, which will then in turn make our lives a lot easier in the workplace, and give us more efficiency and results, and better profitability,” Bailey said.
Bailey-Jensen said that the conference was a great opportunity to see what Indigo could do for them and to network with other users. “It was a chance to come and see what’s on offer, what Dscoop can do for us as a business. Peter had already been to the Centre of Excellence, so I wanted to come and see what was here.
"His experience inspired him to turn our production floor into a mini-Centre of Excellence, modelled on what he saw here, and now I can see why he did that. I’ve seen some other things here that I would like to integrate into our showroom from a business and sales/marketing perspective,” she said.
Dscoop Asia 2017 is still in the planning stages, but according to the user group’s regional chairman Keith Ferrel, there may be bigger and better things coming after that. “There is talk of having a Dscoop global conference in 2018, but nothing has been decided yet,” Ferrel said. The prospective conference would link up Dscoop Asia with its counterparts in Europe and the US, and offer HP customers networking opportunities like never before.
A major announcement at the Singapore event was the inking a major partnership between HP Indigo with Yifutu, one of the biggest printing and design outfits in China.
“We’ve never had an arrangement of this nature in China, connecting many different Indigo users,” said Alon Bar-Shany, Vice President and General Manager, Indigo Digital Press Division.
HP said the Yifutu deal will help the company connect with smaller users across China to increase awareness of what can be done with HP Indigo products, as well as assist them with product development and workflow.
“We’re very open to replicating this deal across the world,” said Bar-Shany.
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