This is Randy Davidson, CEO of WhatTheyThink.com.  I want to talk a little bit about Graph Expo and we’ve had a lot of customers, a lot of our readers and a lot of exhibitors ask us our thoughts on the event, so I just wanted to shoot a message that would convey our collective thoughts from What They Think about Graph Expo.  The event is very important for many of the vendors and especially companies like What They Think and also for many printers to come out and see the new equipment, see the new solutions.  There is certainly is less emphasis on iron and offset presses, but there still is a lot of great innovations from the press companies as well as the digital side and mostly workflow and solutions, a lot of great small companies out here with great technology software solutions. 

I’d like to compliment Ralph Nappi and the GASC staff.  I as a marketer, as someone that follows the industry on a daily basis, follows news trends, press releases and with the analysts I can think of no entity that markets themselves as good a GASC.  They’re partnered on almost all of the user groups in the industry.  They’ve done webcasts.  They’ve tried new things and this is the second year in a row that I have really watched this closely and have been very impressed with how they’ve responded to difficult times and getting attendees here.

Also I saw some interesting data that the registration and the attendance is sort of… is really in line with numbers from early 2000 and so while it feels a little bit less than some of the boom years that we’ve had it’s a very good event.  It’s a very strong event and I'm hoping that our readers, printers and printing industry executives as well as the exhibitors will continue to support the show.