Following fifteen days at drupa, and then a week after the event during which I have written all my reports, I have had time to think what it was all about, and what did it really mean? (EDITOR'S NOTE: If you missed Andy's daily Drupa Blog, Click Here.)

The first comment obviously is that drupa was a success. This was in terms of numbers of attendees. There were less visitors than in 2000, but more than the organizers predicted. The lower numbers are interesting to consider. There were without a doubt a lot fewer printers from Germany, the core printing market in Europe. Perhaps business pressures prevented the print workers from coming, leaving only the owners and managers of these companies to visit. There were more visitors from Eastern Europe and the Far East. While that is good for the exhibitors, as it showed potential of increased sales in these areas, it is perhaps not good for the Western European printers. Lower operating costs in these areas may pull more print work away from Western European producers in the future as the technologies used there improve.

The big push before drupa was all about JDF, and almost every supplier of digital prepress, press and post-press systems was announcing they would be JDF enabled. The drupa organizers announced that drupa 2004 would be the JDF drupa. I disagreed with this and I think I was correct. Visitors did not come to buy JDF, because they did not really know what it was. JDF is not something a printer buys. It is a data format capability that allows different systems from a range of suppliers to communicate with each other and pass messages on status between each other. For a printer, if JDF works well and is fully tested, it means it is feasible to buy systems from a number of suppliers, to build an integrated workflow. If anything, this was a workflow drupa, where printers realized that digital workflow was the key to their future. JDF is just an enabling technology for this.