The PrintTalk consortium was established to promote an XML interoperability specification to work between management (or MIS systems) and printing industry-related ASP e-commerce services. Its charter has since been expanded, and working together with CIP4, has become (in addition to its original mission) the part of the JDF (Job Definition Format) specification that describes e-commerce transactions.

On May 31st, PrintTalk had a meeting at the Gutenberg show in Long Beach, California. A wide range of topics were discussed at the meeting. In addition, an election of officers was held and several new board members were elected. Most importantly, the group got together to discuss the future direction of the PrintTalk.

Jim Mekis, longtime innovator, PrintTalk activist and formerly of George Litho, who was elected Chairman of PrintTalk at the meeting; and Carol Anderson, President of Prism USA, who was elected Vice President and Marketing Officer, take time to discuss where they see the group heading.

WTT: First, Let’s talk about those elections. Who is leading the PrintTalk group today?

Mekis: It's evolving, and with heartfelt farewell, we bid adieu to Steve Hallberg, our outgoing chairman. Steve has been a tireless cheerleader for the group and he will be missed. Steve needs to devote more time to his businesses, but will still be active with the group. I accepted the nomination for the role of PrintTalk chairman.

Carol Anderson, who you know as president of Prism USA, has been elected vice president, a post that I previously held. In addition, Carol was elected Marketing secretary; a post that’s been vacant and sorely needed—which is why, although we’ve had a lot going on for the past year, you haven’t heard much from the group.

Christian Blumenroehr from Heidelberg was elected Technical Secretary, a role previously filled by Mark Huckabone, who will remain active in the group— those are some big shoes to fill, I might add, because Mark has done an incredible job with the specification. But Christian has been active, too, so he’s a great choice for this post.

We also reelected the slate of existing board members and filled two vacant board seats. Ron Berg of Profit Control Systems was elected, as was Chuck Gehman, who also serves on the boards of TAGA (the Technical Association of the Graphic Arts) and the Research and Engineering Council of the Graphic Arts Industry, Inc.


WTT: When PrintTalk started a couple of years back, it almost seemed like it was a reaction to Printcafe both rolling up all those companies, and going into the e-commerce business. From the outside, PrintTalk looked like all the rest of the MIS companies that didn’t get acquired by Printcafe, and all the other significant dotcoms banded together to fight against them. Obviously, a lot has happened since then… can you describe what PrintTalk’s mission was at the beginning and how it has evolved at this point?

Mekis: It was clear to me that the challenge was neither Printcafe on one level, nor the printer down the street on another. The real sources of competition are the alternatives to printing for information dissemination, and the opinion of some buyers that printing is the less-efficient alternative. A solution was clearly needed. While Printcafe may have given us some impetus to work together, it was really a lot bigger thought than that. We saw the reality that no one company could provide all the pieces of the e-commerce equation for printing. So the initial concept of PrintTalk was to literally give the users, both in corporate America and in the printing establishments, the language of interoperability they would need to make all their applications talk to one another so they could transact business in this increasingly digital world.

Anderson: It’s really a much bigger market out there than the Printcafe installed base. And it’s a global market. There may be as many as 120,000 printing establishments worldwide and certainly there are many millions of workers at corporations who touch print either as buyers or as users. So this initiative intends to provide solutions to a broad market of potential applications.


WTT: After the PrintTalk initiative launched, Agfa, MAN Roland, Heidelberg and Adobe announced JDF, and then the CIP4 group was founded out of the existing CIP3. How did that impact PrintTalk and its mission? Does CIP4 do the same things as PrintTalk?

Mekis: At the time of the JDF announcement, there was uncertainty about that question. And because of the large players involved in the JDF launch, it was almost universally anointed as a "standard." I think to a certain extent, there’s still some confusion about how JDF and PrintTalk fit together. The fact is, though, there is now agreement that they are complementary.

JDF is primarily concerned with the digital workflow aspects of print production. The job and its physical components are described in detail, and communicated to and from prepress, and production software and machinery. PrintTalk has always been focused on describing and communicating the commerce and business relationship aspects of the job.

Since those early days, PrintTalk and CIP4 have come together. PrintTalk has become the e-commerce piece of the JDF specification. Mark Huckabone of Electronics For Imaging (EFI) led the technical work on the definition of the PrintTalk specification and Mark is the chairman of the CIP4 e-commerce working group.

The result is that PrintTalk provides much of the e-commerce portion of the JDF specification, and PrintTalk is an alliance partner with CIP4. The CIP4 e-commerce working group holds weekly conference calls, and those calls are also the PrintTalk technical calls.


WTT: Recent news is that Heidelberg has joined PrintTalk. How did that come about and how involved are they in the organization?

Anderson: As you may know, Heidelberg is one of the founders of CIP4, and has been very active in that group. Rainer Prosi from Heidelberg has personally contributed a tremendous amount of work to the JDF specification and quite a number of additional Heidelberg staffers are active in the e-commerce working group. So, since the PrintTalk specification is the e-commerce portion of CIP4, it is only natural that Heidelberg get more involved with the PrintTalk group.

Mekis: PrintTalk is emerging as one of the most important interoperability specifications in the industry. While I can’t speak for Heidelberg, it is clear that they are at the forefront of the development of open standards. As such, they see PrintTalk as a benefit to their customers, for the same reason our other member companies and groups do. PrintTalk, combined with JDF is an important way to ensure the machines and software products produced by Heidelberg can interoperate with those of other companies. In the PrintTalk standard, Heidelberg sees an easily implemented solution that delivers measurable results without requiring expensive custom integration.

As for their level of involvement, we mentioned before that at the most recent PrintTalk, Christian Blumenroehr from Heidelberg accepted the role of Technical Secretary of PrintTalk. That demonstrates commitment.


WTT: We noticed that the DMIA also has joined PrintTalk. Can you talk about the significance of that move?

Mekis: Yes, the DMIA (the Document Management Industries Association) has joined. They had been looking at either creating, or adopting an XML specification to serve the business-to-business needs of their membership, and that search brought them to the PrintTalk group. We think they add an important new dimension to PrintTalk and we are very excited to have them on board. DMIA is our first member that directly represents end-users, and will provide input from that perspective.

Anderson: In addition to Heidelberg and the DMIA, other recent additions to our roster include Ikon Office Solutions and Fuji Photo Film USA. This is a trend for the group, and you’ll see more companies adopting PrintTalk, joining the group and actively participating. It’s really exciting!

It’s interesting to note that when the group was first founded, it was limited to "dot com" companies and management system companies—and the focus was specifically on interoperability between those two types of systems. Since then, the membership criteria have been relaxed.

In March, 2001, the PrintTalk charter was amended to open regular membership in the group to include virtually any company or organization that would interested in furthering our mission to create a standard that will make e-commerce solutions easier to implement by print buyers and printers alike.


WTT: What's in the future?

Mekis: Certainly, we will see further adoption of the PrintTalk specification. We have a new spec, version 1.1 coming out. We expect more and more companies to join the group and contribute to our efforts to address unique industry requirements beyond commercial printing. Probably the most exciting thing is to see the growing enthusiasm of leading -edge printers who have been awaiting availability of JDF compliant tools for managing production within the printing plant, and PrintTalk capabilities to accelerate business relationships with customers and suppliers.

We will hold our next general meeting at GraphExpo in Chicago, in early October. Also at that show, some of the members will be demonstrating interoperability between their systems using the PrintTalk spec on the show floor. We’ll see some real, live implementations.

Anderson: Any one who thinks their company would benefit from involvement in PrintTalk should call Kip Smythe at the NPES, which is the PrintTalk secretariat—or get in touch with me directly. We’ll get you the information you need, and put you in touch with some other members who can help your company understand the benefits and responsibilities of being a member of PrintTalk.


Thank you Jim and Carol! We would also like to thank Chuck Gehman who helped to orchestrate this interview and provided significant guidance and insight for our presentation.