Brace yourselves for a slowdown, but at the same time embrace the Internet and digital printing technologies while raising your prices to pass along your cost increases to customers.

These were the strongest messages delivered last Thursday night in Toronto at the Ontario Printing and Imaging Association's annual Technology Forecast dinner, featuring PIA/GATF CEO/video-star, Michael Makin and PIA/GATF Technologist Dr. Mark Bohan.

Makin didn't gloss over the troubling trends in the general economy and printing industry, especially south of the border, but he did highlight the growth being realized in digital printing and ancillary services being offered by printers. Ink on paper revenues are remaining flat at best.

Showing simple arithmetic, Makin illustrated the direct bottom-line boost achieved by raising prices versus cutting costs. He implored printers to force the issue and stop absorbing the increases in their costs.

Key themes on the technology front included: automation in the workflow, the green movement, packaging, specialty processes and the further integration of the Internet into printing businesses.

Three take-aways from the meeting: another 'green' certification initiative being launched through a triumvirate of associations (PIA/GATF, SGIA and FTA) called the Sustainable Green Printing Partnership (SGP) http://www.sgppartnership.org;

Coming soon will be an online tool, part of PIA/GATF’s E-Business Council, allowing users to test drive different Web-to-print solutions
(http://www.w2ptestdrive.com)

And finally, Michael Makin’s YouTube debut (following Pazazz Printing's Warren Werbitt’s "I Love Printing" rant). Makin expresses his admiration for PIA/GATF in this performance. Judge for yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J14ELhukVNw

A great aspect of online publishing is the immediate feedback loop it allows between sender and receiver. In our last e-newsletter we invited readers to recommend how we might improve our e-delivered product. Thankfully, nobody suggested we stop altogether and 50 percent suggested we don’t change a thing. However, an equal amount did endorse shortening our e-news and sending it out more frequently. Well, what you're seeing now is the result of a few changes we’ve made. Same great content, new packaging. Please send along any suggestions, approving or not, we value the feedback.

Doug Picklyk
Editor, Canadian Printer