Last week we announced more information about the Integrated Print Forum. In particular, we were excited to reveal that Lon Safko will be keynoting the Integrated Print Forum 2011! Lon Safko is the author of The Social Media Bible and, as you would expect, is a digital marketing expert.  He’ll help attendees understand interesting terms and techniques such as, “the fundamental shift in power,” “link love,” “Google Juice,” and SEO advantages to blogging. I wonder if we’ll find out if  “Google Juice” is full of the electrolytes and vitamines a printer needs to integrate new technology? Lon Safko will be a great keynoter, no doubt, but there will also be a number of sessions on the following topics: Mobile Takeover: The Future, Apps and You Digital Acumen: How to Hire the Staff of Tomorrow, Today! Mobile Website Essentials           How to Become a LinkedIn Power User Preparing the PSP for 2020 Direct Marketing Trends 2011: Who’s Mailing What? Build Your Own Augmented Reality Scene    Marketing: The Secret Ingredient Risky Business: Entrepreneurial Adventures in Today’s Marketplace Everyone’s in Sales Personalization Power:  Mastering Relational Databases Practical Integrated Marketing: Winning Your First Campaign Portal Power: Managing Integrated Marketing Campaigns Super Scripts for Dynamic Direct Mail Straight Talk: Sales in 2012 and Beyond  There’s a wealth of cutting-edge talks and information that we’re proud to be hosting at Printing Industries of America this Fall. You can find more information about Integrated Print Forum 2011at http://www.integratedprintforum.org. The forum is open to a limited amount of registrants so it’s recommended that you register early.  For questions about the conference please email, Sam Shea at sshea@printing.org or ask on www.formspring.me/integratedprint.  ...

The Binding Industries Association (BIA) Conference took place on OrlandoMay 23-25 for its largest event in more than five years. With a theme of “Make the Connection,” companies were able to experience significant networking opportunities. This was the definitive event for the binding, graphic finishing, and custom loose-leaf manufacturing. Attendees from all over the country gathered to meet with peers and talk openly about important business issues, strategy, and hear practical tips that would help their companies.   The conference opened with a fantastic keynote session titled No Excuse! Incorporating Core Values, Accountability and Balance into Your Life and Career. This session gave attendees a better understanding of the importance of consistency in behavior, decisiveness, and personal honesty. The speaker, Jay Rifenbary, emphasized how this could help employees’ productivity and efficiency. Attendees also learned how to drive a decisive competitive edge in production, supply chains, and new product introduction by addressing a company’s single biggest constraint. Gerald Kendall, Goldratt Institute, educated the audience about a process called The Five Focusing Steps.  Theory of Constraints is based on the idea that in any complex system at any point in time, there is only one, or at most, very few aspects of the system keeping that system from achieving more of its goal: 1. IDENTIFY the system’s constraint 2. Decide how to best EXPLOIT the constraint 3. SUBORDINATE everything else to the above decision 4. ELEVATE the system’s constraint 5. If, in a previous step, a constraint has been broken, go back to step     1. PREVENT INERTIA from becoming the system’s constraint. A consistent theme of every BIA conference is the close community. Throughout the year, The Binding Industries Association serves as a peer group that not only helps each other, but helps educate the industry. It was a successful conference, and we can’t wait to begin planning for next year! For more information about the BIA, visit...

Yesterday we announced our newest conference–the Integrated Print Forum. It’s a new type of conference that focuses on integrating interactive, dynamic media to print.  In the vein of this conference, we’ll be employing dynamic media to communicate with our audience. To make this a success we want you to particpate and there are a number of ways for that to happen. Visit Formspringand leave us a question about the conference. It’s a simple way for you ask questions and for us to answer them. We’ll be answering those questions on our Integrated Print Forum blog. Speaking of which… Visit the Integrated Print Forum blog for updates that include audio, video and news on the conference as it develops. There are also discussions forum you can be a part of! You can like the Facebook page, where we’ll be having a Q&A and we’ll upload photos/videos that will pop up in your Facebook feed. Talk about convenience! Reserve your seat on our Eventbrite page. we’ll hold a seat for you for a brief amount of time and you’ll also be able to see who else is coming to the Integrated Print Forum! And, of course, you can tweet to us on Twitter – @printind. We look forward to interacting with...

The Binding Industries Associaton Conference is coming up in May and we took the time to talk with past attendee Frank Shear, president, Seaboard Bindery, Inc., about his conference experience. Enjoy the brief interview and let us know what you think in the comments! Have you implemented anything you’ve learned from the BIA conference into your own work? Most definitely.    Much of what I take back with me results from conversations with people. I remember a discussion from one year about employee communication that resulted in me having monthly meetings with our employees to review what we have accomplished in the past month and discuss challenges and opportunities ahead.  Employees have told me they find value in those brief meetings. What were some of the takeaways from the conference? One part of the marketing session involved discussion of where social media marketing fits into the marketing mix.  We are now trying to implement a social media focus into our marketing. Last year there was a panel of print buyers discussing how binders can expand their reach into non-traditional customers.  We have implemented some of this here. Two years ago the seminar on mailing and fulfillment really excited me.  We started offering more fulfillment as part of our services, not to the degree of a specialty fulfillment house, but to give us added value. How useful were the tours? The tours are always eye opening.  There is always something that someone else does differently.  We all get to the same end point, but the paths there are always different.  You get to chat with operators, you get to watch jobs run, it’s a great time to pick the brains of others looking at the same process. New ideas pop up, the juices start flowing. Was it useful to share ideas with your peers? That is what the conference is all about.  The most effective learning for me comes with simply chatting with others. You might overhear someone talking about a problem that you are encountering, or a solution that they are implementing for a problem that you share.  Standing around and talking is perhaps one of the best opportunities to learn. What would you say to someone on the fence about attending the BIA Conference? One never knows what is likely to come up from a seminar or person to person discussion.  I have always had some issue in common with whomever I happened to be talking with.  One new idea or insight can be priceless....

The Continuous Improvement Conference is approaching (April 10-13) and we thought we’d check-in with a past attendee to see how they’ve leveraged the valuable information and techniques presented at the conference. Mike Fehr, Systems & Quality Manager at Friesens Corporation, talks about his takeaway from the Continuous Improvement Conference as well as Lean in general.  What has your experience with the Continuous Improvement conference been like? What have you garnered from it? My experience has been very positive. In fact, this conference has consistently given me more value and ideas than any other conference I have attended. Generally I come home with more ideas than what I have time to implement. We have all experienced that challenge. The difference here is that I hear great low cost ideas that are clear, easy to implement, with good value. In addition, I have been able to pick up the phone and talk to the companies where the ideas have come from and ask additional questions. Do you feel that operational excellence is something all printers should employ? Yes. Although this looks very different to each one of our organizations. The more challenging part is defining and helping people understand what operational excellence is to us. Have you always tried to be as Lean and efficient as possible? What have you learned on your Lean journey? Lean has always been a part of our culture. We formalized this process within our organization by training a few people for their Green Belt. This was done through a Lean Sensei in Vancouver. Although we have tried to practice being Lean, we did not have the tools to do so. After training we were able to formalize ways of acting Lean more efficiently. After attending my first CI Conference a few years ago, I changed much of my language from Lean to Continuous Improvement internally. Essentially all of the blitzes, projects, etc, are all CI initiatives to become better.  There are many things that we have learned during our Lean journey. Here is a snapshot of a couple: Be sure to involve the right people in blitzes. The most successful ones include facilitators (Green Belts), experts (operators/staff members) and decision makers (managers of the area affected). Also, include experts from multiple shifts.  We have a Lean Team responsible for CI type initiatives. They include a cross section of staff and managers.  Any advice for other printers looking to embrace the Lean lifestyle?  Be less concerned about trying to quantify ROI than about achieving desired results. The return is there. Be sure to involve some senior management with Lean reports. How do you go about learning new Lean techniques? I learn new Lean techniques through conferences and...