Pat Henry:  This is Pat Henry, Executive Editor at WhatTheyThink at day one of the pre-IPEX briefing in Brussels, Belgium.  March 8, 2010.  And with us this evening at the conclusion of day one is Kevin Joyce, Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Marketing, Digital Printing Solutions.  Kodak -- Eastman Kodak Company.

Kevin, thank you so much for being with us.

Kevin Joyce:  My pleasure, Patrick.

Pat Henry:  Kevin, Kodak took up the bulk of the afternoon with an extended presentation, a preview of IPEX.  And we heard from you a great deal about digital printing.  I heard about digital presses breaking into the newspaper world.  I heard about the addition of color to the Prosper line.  Can you recap for us the announcements that you will be making at Drupa under the heading in digital presses?

Kevin Joyce:  So at IPEX the most exciting thing we announced today was the first installation in Europe of the Prosper 5000 Color Press.  This is following other announcements that you have heard about the Prosper Press installations but here, of course for the European organization, Rotomail's announcement of taking the first color press for Europe is one of our big announcements.  And as you heard today, Patrick, when people asked Rotomail for what application were they planning to use the Prosper for, you saw a variety of applications.  You heard magazine, you heard catalog, you heard books.

So I think it was a great example of how we're targeting certain applications.

So that was a big announcement.  It's always nice to talk about products but it's really exciting when you have the customer like Georgio was today just sharing his passion on why he's excited about this technology and what it does for his business.

Pat Henry:  And tell us who Georgio is and what he has done.

Kevin Joyce:  Georgio Albertini is one of the principals of Rotomail and had a big part at looking at this technology and saying this is something that can help him grow his business.  And as many of you heard today, but for the benefit of the audience here, has been a long user of Kodak's Inkjet technology, has several generations and sees the Prosper Press as the next opportunity to help grow his business in customers that are looking for the offset class digital without compromise attributes in Prosper.

Pat Henry:  Well now Kevin as we know there is nothing that an offset press can do these days except in terms of possibly the highest volume production that a digital press can't do, yet Kodak has got a foot in both worlds.  Obviously, in the digital market with the Prosper technology and the Versamark, not to mention -- failed to mention Versamark -- yet you also are -- remain a major supplier to conventional printers.  How do you reconcile the two that would seem to be opposites?

Kevin Joyce:  Right.  We don't see how you could do it any other way.  The announcements that we talked about today; there was strong emphasis on our pre-press portfolio with the trillion plate, our Flexcell technology for packaging.  You heard about our workflow and our consulting business, that we're investing heavily to help customers transform and of course Prosper and of course the innovations in Next Press.

We don't know how you could do it any other way.  I mean, Next Press is an extremely efficient medium; it's the core of our customer base.  We see this transformation to digital taking quite some time, although there's a lot of euphoria around what Prosper is going to do for the marketplace, but we see the technology coexisting and they help push each other.  So the advancements that are made in offset, we need to be aware of those because our digital technology to the offset class has to be equal to or better in quality, productivity, and cost in order to transform a business.

And I'll give you a simple example, Patrick.

Pat Henry:  Sure.

Kevin Joyce:  Direct mail.  So one of the applications for the Prosper S10 in printing heads using the stream technology is direct mail and we do in printing on offest printing.  There's a perfect combination of an established asset, a web press, that our customers have that they make money with and they're enhancing the value of that asset by adding a digital component to it.  I can't think of any better example of showing how the two technologies co-exist.

Pat Henry:  Kevin, and finally, everything that you discussed this after will be shown in fact at IPEX in a couple of months.  What sort of a show are you looking forward to?  Do you expect it will be well attended?  Is there a lot of advanced interest?  How is it shaping up?

Kevin Joyce:  IPEX is happening at an interesting time for the economy and for our industry.  I think there's a lot pent up demand, of what we see is a lot of pent up demand of people that have done a lot of work to get the cost structure of their businesses at a point where they could be profitable.  We are seeing a high level of interest in workflow automation and digitization of their businesses to make themselves more efficient and to move into other businesses.

So we feel that this is going to be an incredibly exciting IPEX.  You know, not just for Kodak, but for our industry.  We're getting a lot of interest for our customers already setting up demonstrations to see the first commercialized public view of the Prosper 5000 Color Press.  This will be the first time we're showing it.

Pat Henry:  Very exciting.  Yeah.

Kevin Joyce:  So, obviously there's a lot of excitement around doing that -- around seeing that.

Pat Henry:  Well, Kevin, always great to catch up with Kodak.  When we do, there's always a lot of news and we thank you for sharing it with us.

Kevin Joyce:  My pleasure, Patrick.

Pat Henry:  Pat Henry, WhatTheyThink.  Thanks for watching.