I’ve been in the industry for a little more than 30 years, which qualifies me as a certified OLD GUY. It also qualifies me for consideration as a curmudgeon – though certainly not yet in the league of Romano and Vinocur.

So here’s my take on drupa – ANOTHER one that I didn’t attend! Next time, you should think twice about going.

I haven’t gone to drupa very often, mostly because I don’t need another excuse for a trip to Europe. I go every six weeks or so - to see my grandchildren. But if you want to visit Europe, then invent some other flimsy excuse instead of drupa. You’ll have more fun, and you’ll save yourself some bad decisions!

My firm has worked with 592 graphic arts companies in the past 20 years, and we’ve found an almost perfect inverse relationship between firms being profit leaders and their likelihood of attending drupa. That is: the more profitable they are, the less likely they are to go. Or at least the less likely they are to make important decisions connected with drupa.

Why is that so? The profit-leading CEOs are generally not among the earliest adapters of technology. They know that anyone can buy equipment. The real question is what you’re going to do with it in order to make the investment pay off. So they identify their needs for meeting market demands and examine the various approaches to meeting those needs.

Why should the timing of such big decisions have anything to do with the timing of drupa?

Yes, every fifteen or twenty years the top-performing CEOs might go to drupa to gain an overview of an entirely new class of technology. Or if they’re on the fence about buying a major new piece of equipment, they’ll occasionally permit a vendor to induce them to attend.

But virtually all of the profit leaders recognize that drupa acts like a nickel bag of dope. Far too many printers have committed to a piece of new technology or a drupa “show special” press at a reduced price and wonderful financing, and then wondered a year later “what the heck was I thinking?”

We can’t blame the beer, the wonderfully cheap and elegant hotels or the refined social environment at drupa. It’s something else in the air, and it’s my experience that decisions made at (or strongly influenced by) drupa are almost always bad decisions.

Yes, technology has transformed our industry – and being well-informed is crucial to good decision-making. For consultants, it’s especially important to see emerging trends in technology in order to help clients make good decisions. Yet even consultants like me have found it much more useful to spend time with our technically-informed friends when they’ve returned from drupa, debriefing them once they’ve had a chance to absorb and filter their own drupa experiences.

Before the next drupa, ask yourself:

“Do I really have to be among the first people in the world to know about a new technology or see a new piece of equipment? Can I learn what I need to know while in the midst of an expensive and noisy carnival?”

I don’t think you do. If drupa provides a focal point for manufacturers to hurry new developments to market, then I’m happy for them to use the show to spur their own efforts. But otherwise, drupa is just an elaborate evasion for vendors who are utterly unable to explain their products satisfactorily or provide useful and relevant demos at home.

Drupa also encourages hurried and half-baked decisions by users who are unable to gather their own information from other sources. Putting it more simply: drupa is Show and Tell for grown-ups – held in a slightly exotic location. For the vendors, it’s dream to have all their best prospects gathered in one place.

But what’s the big deal for customers? Seeing a demo press made ready in six minutes doesn’t prove much, does it? Even if you accept the claim as true, you’re still going to run your own demo after the show, using your own test jobs, aren’t you? So too with any other piece of equipment or technology.

I advise my clients that if they simply must go to drupa, then by all means go to enjoy the festivities. Take time to regret the fall of the dollar, drink the beer, and when you’re done, go to visit other places in Europe. (Change the order if you like.)

Then come home to do your information-gathering and decision-making in a more thoughtful and less compressed manner. Read the countless articles that will be written, reflect on your company’s opportunities and needs, talk to the vendors after they’ve recovered, and talk to other well-informed people. Then reflect on what you’ve learned while asking yourself the single most important question of all: how are you going to put the dazzling new technology to use profitably.

Oh yes, there’s one more thing. If you can’t (or don’t want to) do that information-gathering for yourself, there are some consultants you should know. The only downside is that they probably won’t provide you with beer and bratwurst.