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Hello thINK User Group! My first year on the thINK Board has been an exciting one, and I was honored to be asked to step up as Board Vice President. I am looking forward to working with Bob Radzis. I think his experience will really add value to the thINK community and I’m excited to be a part of his team. To give you a little background on me, I’m Executive Vice President and part owner of Access Direct Systems. I started my career there many years ago in an entry level position. Working my way up through the ranks of the company instilled in me a real passion for digital print and now inkjet. In 2014, we transitioned our entire organization to support inkjet. The thINK community has been a major source of support for us since that transition. How Can We Support You? Going into this new role, my goal is to be your representative. As a thINK attendee, speaker, vendor, Canon customer, and now a thINK Board officer, I aspire to be a voice to the needs of every member of the community. …

It’s a new year and a new chapter in the thINK user group. Happy New Year! I am pleased to begin 2018 as your newly elected thINK Board President. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Chief Customer Officer at SG360° and I was Conference Chair for thINK 2017. I’ve been involved with thINK since the very beginning, serving on the steering committee. As part of a group of ten Canon customers, we began meeting in April 2014 to shape the group’s direction, goals, and educational objectives.  Mark DeBoer, our previous thINK President was also part of the steering committee, and I’m focused on picking up where he left off. I’m also excited about working with all the board members. They are an amazing group of people with a lot of knowledge and viewpoints to share.  thINK 2018 and Beyond The thINK conference has grown every year. Attendance is up. Sponsorship is up. Our educational offerings are right on target. Our challenge going forward is to stay in tune with the marketplace and keep …

Like any savvy business professional, Jeff Birmingham understands that to be successful your company has to keep evolving. As president of Houston-based Alliance Printing and Graphics: Print Evolved, Birmingham continually enhances his shop’s offerings. To that end, throughout the company’s 30-year history, Birmingham has expanded on the shop’s original offset capabilities to become a full-service shop, adding digital flexography for label production, digital storefront technology for online ordering, digital printing for short-run and on-demand work, and most recently with the installation of the Océ ColorStream 3700, continuous feed inkjet printing for fast turnaround, high-volume, high-quality output. Alliance has not only expanded its offerings, it has also grown in size, opening a second Houston location following the July 2017 purchase of the new equipment. While committed to technology and the innovation it fosters, every piece of hardware and software purchased has to both …

Inkjet: Advancements in inkjet technology have print service providers asking not if, but WHEN they should invest. InfoTrends interviewed a number of inkjet users to find out the critical strategies they are following to accelerate their organization’s path to profitability.  In the recent Keypoint Intelligence | InfoTrends “Inkjet: The Pathway to Profitability” analysis, Barb Pellow shared key highlights: InfoTrends expects global digital production color volume impressions to approach 895 billion in 2020, with inkjet representing 60% of total volume.  Investing in inkjet is not enough to drive business results; building a business with sustained growth requires service providers to develop a solid strategic plan. The real value of inkjet comes from doing things that can’t be done with other print technologies, including the ability to produce more affordable high-value personalization, short runs, and versioning. With the question being “not if, but when” to make an inkjet …

Recently while perusing my local wing joints sauce heat index I started thinking about an all too common problem for printers. How spicy is too spicy? Color perception, like taste is very subjective.  I grew up with an Asian influence in a step-mother who immigrated from South Korea. I enjoy very spicy foods. My wife on the other hand grew up with a comparably “bland” palate. Thus food she finds too hot I regularly enjoy. Similarly when discussing color do we know how “spicy” our customers want their color? Generally when discussions about color or color accuracy come up they usually center on industry specifications, calibration methods or how close to a particular technology or media can achieve to some other technology. These are important topics that speak to consistency and accuracy, what’s usually missing is what does the customer expect to see? A press can print 100% accurate and still be 100% wrong to the end customer. How is that possible? When measuring spiciness something …