As part of WhatTheyThink.com’s continuing coverage of Heidelberg’s announcement, Joel Friedman, Executive Director of Heidelberg’s user group, HDIA: Heidelberg Digital Imaging Association, provides insight into how his members are reacting. Here’s Joel’s view of the changing world taken from a discussion yesterday with WTT contributing editor Gail Nickel-Kailing.

Joel Friedman: Of course, some of our membership is nervous about things that “might happen” or, in fact, that will happen - they will engage in guessing games. I get a lot of e-mail from our members and even from Heidelberg employees asking questions too. Our e-mail newsletter list includes almost 500 Heidelberg employees worldwide who see the same e-mails that our members see.

The first reaction is, of course, “What will this mean to me? What will this mean to my business?” For example, we have a member who is looking at an upcoming purchase of a couple of Digimasters. That member is wondering who’s going to own that business unit? Will the Digimaster be serviced by Heidelberg or another company? Will Heidelberg retain responsibility for sales? Will Heidelberg retain responsibility for service? So this news obviously introduces a measure of uncertainty that was not there before.