Printing News October 2020

TEXTILES ─ Printing United

PRINTING UNITED GOES

VIRTUAL

There's a little bit for everyone from the comfort of their own home office.

By Richard Romano

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Virtual events” aren’t really anything new; vendors have long held online events and product launches. But since the pandemic and the lockdown, events usually held IRL are now going virtual.

Last month, Canon’s thINK Conference went online with great success and this month, the first of the major industry events, PRINTING United, goes virtual.

On Oct. 26, industry professionals will have the opportunity to see what the future of events will look like, at least Content Topic Week 1 Event Opening Graphics/Wide-Format (Hardware and Consumables) Apparel - Analog/Screen Commercial - Digital Inkjet Packaging - Label and Flexible Graphics/Wide-Format (Finishing and Workflow)

Week 2 In-Plant Forum Commercial - Offset/Analog Packaging - Folding Carton and Corrugated Mailing and Fulfillment Workflow and Software {All segments)

Week 3 Apparel - Direct-to-garment/ Direct-to-substrate Commercial - Dry and Liquid Toner Industrial Digital Textile

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in part. This year’s PRINTING United was slated to be held in Atlanta, and back in June, the PRINTING United Alliance (PrUA) decided, what with coronavirus cases rising on top of mass protests in Atlanta, to go online rather than postpone the event until 2021.

“Our [PrUA’s] mission is really to support the industry,” said Mark Subers, president of PRINTING United. “That involves making sure that the exhibitors have engagement, especially this year when drupa had been planned, companies had R&D cycles scheduled Segment

Date

Overview Graphics/Wide-format

10/26/2020 10/26/2020

Apparel Commercial Packaging Graphics/Wide-format

10/27/2020 10/28/2020 10/29/2020 10/30/2020

In-Plant (Stand-Alone Event} Commercial Packaging Mailing/Fulfillment Workflow/Software (Cross segment)

11/2/2020 11/3/2020 11/4/2020 11/5/2020 11/6/2020

Apparel

11/9/2020

Commercial Industrial Digital Textile

11/10/2020 11/11/2020 11/12/2020

WhatTheyThink - Wide-Format&Signage | October 2020

around it, and there are a lot of product releases. So how do we inform people?”

Once the decision was made to do a virtual event, the next question was, what does it look like? Rather than present six to eight hours of online programming each day or take a multitrack approach, the idea was to focus each day on a specific segment or sub-segment of the industry—what show organizers are calling “Insight Days”— and provide three-and-a-half to four hours of programming on any given day. So one day would focus on commercial print, the next on wide format, the next packaging, followed by textiles and apparel, mailing and fulfillment, industrial and so on. (The show is scheduled to run for 14 days; the schedule is still being developed as of press time.)

Each day then would provide a mix of programming specific to that day’s industry segment.

There would be a keynote, indepth, editorial-based educational sessions from subject matter experts, and six 10 -12minute product announcements and demos from exhibitors.

“If you want to describe what this looks like, I’m shooting for a news magazine like ‘60 Minutes,’” Subers said. “We’re