by Jeremy Smith October 24, 2002 -- Next week will be my first visit to Xplor. While this will be my first visit to the show, this year will be its 23rd year. I never really thought much about this show until this year, when clients began asking - “I want to purchase a new digital press but how do I take advantage of opportunities in this market? Where do I find the personnel necessary and information to create the infrastructure I need to support these customers?” This year’s show theme is Where All Document Technologies Converge. This is a great theme for the show. Most documents have many lives and are usually being used for more than one single instance and travel across many mediums. The common term used for the multiple use of documents and images is repurposing. I prefer the phrase - the reincarnation of documents. I help many of my clients successfully transition from being a printing organization of today to becoming a reincarnater of documents. I know this is not a word but the R used in Toys R Us is not a word either. For printing organizations not familiar with Xplor, the conference and exhibit covers digital printing and publishing,1:1 marketing, e-business, customer relationship management, mailing, emerging technologies, and document technology best practices. Basically, all products, technologies and processes associated with complete document life cycle. The biggest difference between a show like Graph Expo and Xplor are night and day. Printers and prepress organizations purchased digital and offset equipment at Graph Expo making it more of a hardware buying show. Xplor really offers you the opportunity to learn how to bring the type of customers you will need to become a player in the growing 1:1 market. Too many printers think that by placing an order for a new digital press they are half way home to becoming a player in the digital printing marketing. If you are used to having too much capacity with your offset presses you will run into the same problem with your brand spanking new digital press if you do not develop a strategy for your company. Today’s printing organization must be able to support every destination process along the life cycle of a document. The printing process is just one stop along the life cycle of a document. Xplor offers printing organizations the opportunity to look outside the world of traditional print buying and inside the business ecosystem of corporate documents. One of the great values of WhatTheyThink.com is that contributors make sure you are updated on all the major industry events. Noel Ward and other WTT columnists will be live at Xplor providing you with the day-by-day details of this year’s show. WTT has asked me to provide a final take on the show and if the World Series is extended to a seventh game down in Anaheim, I might add some special coverage live from Anaheim. Go Giants!