Cary Sherburne:  Hi, I'm Cary Sherburne, senior editor at WhatTheyThink.com and I'm here with Dave Erlandson who is general manager of Caslon and PODi.  Welcome.

Dave Erlandson:  Hi Cary.

Cary Sherburne:  You guys are gearing up for your next… your 2011 PODi Applications Forum.

Dave Erlandson:  Yes, we are Cary.  It will be an exciting conference.  It’s going to be held January 31st through February 2nd at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas.

Cary Sherburne:  Great.

Dave Erlandson:  And it’s hosted by Caslon, which is the management company for PODi and the purpose of the conference it’s really about helping those companies that want to take advantage of the new opportunities enabled by digital print.  It’s for those companies that want to go beyond shortrun color printing.

Cary Sherburne:  And so it’s really educating them about some of the unique and different applications.  I know I get involved a lot of times with judging of the best practices and you see some amazing things.

Dave Erlandson:  Yeah, it’s really…  That’s why we call it the Applications Forum, but really we have not only applications.  We have sessions on strategy, so maybe you’re thinking about becoming a marketing service provider or perhaps you’re thinking about going on the print on demand path or getting into digital packaging, so we have all kinds of sessions on strategy and then we have sessions on execution as well, so the applications and then the two core or fundamental pillars for implementing that strategy are sales and technology, so we do some solution selling training.

Cary Sherburne:  That’s great.

Dave Erlandson:  Kate Dunn does ...

Cary Sherburne:  Kate is great, yeah.

Dave Erlandson:  Yeah, she does a great job and then we have providers come and talk and then we also have a number of sessions on the technology that is required to implement these solutions from QR codes to augmented reality, pearls, data analytics, web to print, value stream mapping, automation, so a full range from strategy to execution.

Cary Sherburne:  And I understand that people can still get early bird pricing.

Dave Erlandson:  Yeah, early bird is open until November 19th, so registration is available on the website, yeah.

Cary Sherburne:  PODI.org.

Dave Erlandson:  PODI.org or F1.org, those are the websites.

Cary Sherburne:  And so the other thing is being in Las Vegas in January, February if you’re from the northeast or something it’s probably a good place to go.

Dave Erlandson:  We picked Las Vegas for a couple of reasons.  That is where our attendees vote that they like to go.  It’s easy to get to logistics wise.  It’s fairly inexpensive to get there and then yeah; there is fun things to do while you’re there.

Cary Sherburne:  And it’s warm more or less.

Dave Erlandson:  Yeah, we’re going to have it at the Mirage Hotel.  That is the home of Siegfried and Roy or it used to be until Roy got in trouble with that tiger.

Cary Sherburne:  Yeah, that tiger.

Dave Erlandson:  So hopefully we’re going to change it up a little bit and do Siegfried and Rab because Rab Govil is the CEO of Caslon.  We’d like to put him out there with the tigers, so.

Cary Sherburne:  That doesn’t sound very good.  All right, well we’re going to have a lot of fun at the App Forum, so look forward to this.

Dave Erlandson:  Yeah, what really makes it special is that it’s put on primarily by the people that are actually doing the work today.  It’s practitioners, not theorists, so you get to hear what has been successful for them and more importantly, sometimes you get to hear what didn’t work, so it can be really valuable, but it’s a chance to do networking the old fashioned way.  A little bit more than 140 characters at a time right and meet some people and try your luck at the tables or take in a show and have a good time.

Cary Sherburne:  That’s great.  Well we’ll look forward to seeing you there.