User conferences come in all sizes; from Xplor - probably the grand-daddy of them all - which started out years ago as a Xerox user group, EFI's Connect, XMPie's new user group, and DICE, re-named from ICE (Indigo Customer Exchange) to Digital Imaging Customer Exchage. This week, I am attending the Second Annual Dscoop Conference. Dscoop stands for the Digital Solutions Cooperative.

Being held in Tampa, Florida, this year's Dscoop Conference turned out to be a bit more than the organizers had planned. Based on attendance last year of less than 400 and a few "guesstimates" on those who would attend this year, planners optomostically forecast about 500-600 attendees. The event is bursting at the seams with more than 700 attendees PLUS more than 100 HP executives and staff.

Marv Levy, NFL Hall of Fame Coach, opened the conference today with some nuggets of advise on leadership, resiliance, and teamwork. Some of the bits of wisdom he shared today were:

• Three qualities of every good coach - football or otherwise: the ability to teach, the ability to work with others in the organzation, and honesty and the ability to be a straight shooter.


• Good coaching helps other people get the best out of themselves, developes attitudes that breed success, and builds strong teams.


• It's amazing what you can do if no one cares about who gets the credit.


• What it takes to succed is simple, but not easy.

Coach Levy autographed footballs for the first 100 Dscoop registrants.

Dscoop offered more than 50 education sessions in the Business/Sales, Label and Packaging and Technical tracks; however, before the heavy lifting began, four teams took the opportunity to participate in their own team building exercise by building boats out of cardboard and - you guessed it - duct tape! Believe it or not, they all proved to be sea worthy, some taking on a little more water than others. The SS VDP was built by Jill Powers, HP; Al Miltz, Ryden Decal; Paul Arpino, Next Generation Printing; Michael Doherty, Select Group; John Runderio, North East Technical College; Ricardo Aguilera, Digital Printing Center; John Paollillo, Global Soft Digital; Rich Lidestri, Global Soft Digital; and Matt Newell, Marketing Alliance Group.