IPEX drives digital media – commentary by Andy McCourt

Print tradeshows are undergoing massive change and must adapt to maintain relevance. In the first of his new monthly columns for Print21, Andy McCourt turns his eye to the up-coming IPEX tradeshow.

Let me start by saying there is no denying the magnificence, scale, organisation and importance of the great Düsseldorf trade exhibition, Drupa. I’ve been to six and every one has been a winner. But in 2010, has something crept under Drupa’s radar that signals such massive change in the way graphic media trade events are structured, that the masters at the Messe might have missed?

I refer to two recent announcements: 1) IPEX, the UK show to be staged in May, has more floorspace booked by digital vendors than for traditional process exhibitors. 2) The organisers of Drupa, Messe Düsseldorf, have just announced a new digital print/publishing event called digi:media with the first annual show due in April 2011.

Let’s look at the implications of the first announcement. IPEX is the show that launched digital printing to the world in 1993, when an unknown Israeli company named Indigo, and an equally obscure Belgian firm named Xeikon stunned the print media community with digital colour presses that needed no plates and could potentially vary the content with every page. It could be argued that Print ’91 in Chicago should claim the digital laurels, but at that show Heidelberg showed the now defunct GTO-DI, a direct-imaging press that still used plates. There was a lot of scepticism amongst the offset vendors at the time but, seventeen years later, 38% of IPEX has been booked by digital press vendors, and only 26% by traditional print process vendors. The rest is post-press, converting and ‘other.’

IPEX’s largest exhibitor is a 100% digital supplier – HP – whose stand is more than one-third larger than at the last IPEX in 2006. If you look at the ‘top ten’ exhibitors, the stats are even more intriguing; 80% are digital and 10% are offset and post-press.

Conclusion? IPEX is already a digital media event.

Of course, at nearly 30% of floorspace, there is still a massive display of offset and other technologies but the point is, visitors who have feet in both camps will have their needs totally fulfilled, visitors who are not yet in digital will experience the world’s best-ever presentation of technologies that will help them survive and prosper and all-digital visitors will be in technology Nirvana – and ironically they might even invest in offset for those longer print runs.

Now let’s look at digi:media, the Drupa-organisers’ approach. The first event is slated for April 2011 and it is then planned to be annual, with the 2012 event a subset of Drupa. Its slogan is ‘Content meets Technology, meets Business.’ What are they thinking? That this does not apply to Drupa, IPEX, IGAS, PRINT, GRAPHEXPO, PACPRINT, PRINTEX etc? For over a decade, these trade events have striven to bring everything that digi:media aims for to their audiences. Cross-media, multi-purposing of information, non-print re-purposing to mobile and online media – all have been extensively explored, analysed, promoted and sold at print media shows.

The global printing industry attends trade shows expecting to see everything that comprises the world of print media production – plus any new trends. Does it need a separate event, treating digital media as if it is some newfangled ‘discovery?’ The customers who flock to these shows have businesses that are homogenous, combining digital and non-digital output. Trade events need to reflect the reality found in customers’ businesses.

And for exhibitors who spend staggering amounts on major trade events; do their budgets need the additional burden of another annual event targeting markets  they already reach at the big print shows?

Conclusion? The thinking behind digi:media is flawed. All graphic media shows are, or should be, digital media events, as well as traditional.

Here in Australia, we can be proud that next year’s PrintEx and the quadrennial PacPrint events deliver the homogeneity that treats print media as print media – irrespective of output method. The pre-media side is a given thing – it’s been digital for ages.

IPEX has also ‘caught the Pearl’ of what is going on and is charging ahead with a show that promises to be quite sensational – for both digital and non-digital media - and may be remembered as the ‘Tipping-Point’ year where our industry ceased to resist digital and plunged headlong into the future.

If Drupa and Messe Düsseldorf remain intent on protecting fading hegemonies by continuing to treat digital as something separate and subservient to offset et al; we may even see a re-articulation of print power influence, in favour of IPEX.

Feel free to disagree, argue, rant or even support by emailing: mccourtseye@print21.com.au