NAPL Top Management Conference 2010

Marco Island, Florida

February 14-17 

Interviewer:  Hi, we're here with Howie Fenton, Senior Consultant with NAPL.  Howie, we're here at Marco Island for the TMC, Top Management Conference 2010 and it sounds like there is a reception going on behind us.  We're gearing up for tomorrow, Day 1, of the conference.  Tell us a little bit -- take us through a little bit about TMC, what it is, what people are going to expect to experience tomorrow and what some of the things we'll be reporting on WhatTheyThink.

Howie Fenton:  Okay.  Great.  Well thanks for participating; we appreciate that.  Top Management Conference this year comes at the end of probably one of the toughest years for most of us of our generation.  The economic times, we're all struggling, and what we're going to be talking about at Top Management is not only how do you emerge from this recession, but how do you come out stronger.  So, there's a number of different things that we're going to be hearing about, some for the first time.  Next generation leaders is an example of something that we're going to be hearing about for the first time.

We're going to be talking about the transition from print service providers to marketing service providers and focusing a lot of time and energy on how to become a marketing service provider or for more marketing services.  We're going to talk about customer service.  We're going to talk about what to expect financially this year and next year.

A lot of exciting developments we're hoping will help catapult those who are willing to make the change in to becoming leaders because that's really what NAPL represents is how do you become a leader. 

Interviewer:  So full day tomorrow, full day Tuesday, and --

Howie Fenton:  And then half-day Wednesday.

Interviewer:  And a half-day Wednesday.

Howie Fenton:  Yeah.

Interviewer:  What are some of the sessions specifically that users or attendees are going to be experiencing?

Howie Fenton:  Well there's going to be a couple of sessions, like I said, that talk about marketing service providers; how to become marketing service providers.  What we find are common denominators that companies have who successfully launch marketing services; things like the ability to do variable data printing, create databases, offer pearls, landing pages, those sorts of things.  That's one of the things we're going to talk about.

We're going to have marketing awards for companies that are doing outstanding jobs in their marketing attempts.  We'll be talking about customer service and sales and how to build those.  Those are some of the major initiatives that we expect in the next year or so. 

Interviewer:  Excellent.  I know we're going to be -- there's a lot of progressive printers here, a lot of people doing a lot of really good stuff, so it's a good peer atmosphere.  We're going to be interviewing some of those folks while we're here and people can look forward to seeing some of those in the future on WhatTheyThink.

Howie Fenton:  Yeah, we think that one of the main advantages of Top Management is not just the content; the content is outstanding.  Everybody agrees that the content is outstanding, but the people that come, the attendees, the ability to network and meet people may be sort of lays the ground work in the future if you're thinking about things like mergers and acquisitions, maybe looking for people who are highly skilled people for your companies.  We think the networking is just as valuable as the content for the show.

Interviewer:  Great.  Well we're looking forward to participating.  Thanks for taking a couple minutes of your time to talk with us.

Howie Fenton:  Thank you.