Having had an opportunity to reflect on the information that EFI and its partners shared with the media and users during Connect 2005, EFI's 6th annual users' conference, held in Miami Beach, it strikes me how large this annual event has become and the increasing cross-section of the industry it has come to represent. While it started, of course, as the users’ group for Printcafe’s print MIS solutions, it has now grown far beyond that in just the two short years EFI has been driving the event, and it will continue to grow, according to Guy Gecht, EFI’s CEO.

This year's conference was attended by 1,200 people, the largest number of attendees in the conference's history, including members of the press from publications around the world. WhatTheyThink published an overview of the activities of the first few days of the conference during the event, including the keynote address by famed astronaut Captain James Lovell.

Next year, Connect will be back in Las Vegas , at the Venetian in early May, and Gecht hopes to see at least 1,500 attendees and more partners, bolstered by the company’s plan to incorporate formal Fiery and VUTEk user groups into the event. Not only has Connect become an important networking and educational venue for printers and vendors alike, but the scope will now cover the gamut of the printing industry, from packaging and flexo to superwide format and the office/quick/digital printing worlds, in addition to the original core of general commercial and packaging printers.