Cary Sherburne:  Hi, I'm Cary Sherburne, Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink.com and I'm here with my WhatTheyThink colleague, Andy Tribute.  How are you?

Andy Tribute:  I'm very well.  Thank you, Cary.  Nice to see you.

Cary:  Nice to see you, too.  We're here together in Europe.  I had to travel farther than you did for a change.

Andy:  It makes a change doesn't it actually being in where I come from.

Cary:  Yeah, exactly.  So we're here at Hunkeler Innovation Days 2011.  So what do you think of the show?  You got here -- you've been here a few hours, you've had time to look around.

Andy:  Well the interesting thing is I think that if any tradeshow organizers were to come here they would be using the term gob smacked because basically this place is heaving with people.  This is a private tradeshow so invitation show really and it is absolutely staggering with people, everyone who's a mover and a shaker in the high-speed inkjet, the digital area, and in the finishing is here.  It's really a fantastic networking location.

Cary:  So that's from the vendor side and I'm also seeing some pretty high profile companies, Donaly, Quad, and Vernus, they're all here too.

Andy:  Everyone's here.  Ther'es convergance in a sense.  This is a show that's driven by Hunkeler but the great thing about it is Hunkeler brings in its partners and many of its competitors who link in different places but it's fascinating if you want to find out what's happening in the whole situation of finishing for digital print this is where to come.  And it's interesting that it's been looking at tradeshow floor is that I've complained many times to Heidelberg and saying, "Look, why aren't you in this business of digital print finishing?  You know, you are one of the biggest players in offset print finishing but you seem to understand the future opportunity."  It's interesting Heidelberg have a big stand here and are showing some interesting things to fit into this market space.  So perhaps they're learning and when we get the announcement in the next few weeks from Heidelberg in digital there may be some of this in it.

Cary:  So is their first time here?

Andy:  It's their first time here with their own show.  In the past, they've had a folder linked to a Hunkeler system on someone else's --this is the first time under their own brand.

Cary:  Wow.  That's interesting.

Andy:  So it's significant.  But it's as a show -- I love this show.  It's a great show because you meet all the people you know.  The vendors, there's lots and lots of key users.  You've interviewed many of them already and every time I walk around here someone comes up and says, "Hello.  What are you doing?" et cetera.  But this is where I come really to see what's happening in this whole continuous feed area.  There are a few new announcements here and there's more new announcements to come in the next few weeks in fact.  But basically this is where it's happening and you really want to find out what's happening, you want to talk to people, and you'll get it here.

Cary:  And what I -- it's such a different feel from a typical American tradeshow.  It's busy but it's much more relaxed and people really are taking the time to talk to each other, to talk to their peers, to talk to all the different vendors.  It's really --

Andy:  I read this morning saying that this whole new thing on tradeshows -- well not so much that it's new it's a vendor driven tradeshows and vendor invitational tradeshows and I mentioned FI Connect, I mentioned the previous Oce Open House, I mentioned the Dscoop event.  This is the classic of it where they really make a phenomenal thing of thing, there's no conference in this.  There is a conference linked to it but it's got everything here and it's so successful and the atmosphere is great.  There's no pressure.  And the other thing is I don't know who pays for it but we get free lunch.

Cary:  There you go.

Andy:  And a glass of wine with it as well.  So what more could we want.

Cary:  The pizza was great today.

Andy:  Absolutely, yeah.  And I think this is the way that tradeshows may have you go but it may be sort of invitational tradeshows that -- and you get this sort of structure because it really is a fascinating way of doing things.

Cary:  Well thank you for sharing.