Frank Romano: Hi, this is Frank Romano for whattheythink.com. I’m here in Boston at the XMPI users group meeting and I’m with Dr. Jacob Aizikowitz. Now, you may recognize him. He was part of the team that created Darwin which was the first serious variable data program. And, of course, part of the team that created XMPI, perhaps one of the most sophisticated variable data programs.
This has been an exciting meeting. I was really impressed yesterday in the early evening when they had a session where they looked at new ideas. Now, Jacob, is that something you have been doing on a regular basis? Bringing your users together and just listening to them?

Dr. Jacob Aizikowitz: Well, not in the format that you saw yesterday. That kind of format we started a year ago when we actually learned something from Xerox and we started doing something that we called the dreaming session. But yesterday there was also a very special session about social media. It was also done as a workshop with separate group thinking, like brainstorming and bringing ideas. So it is a new format for us. In an event like this we have always listened from our customers.

Frank Romano: One of the things I saw yesterday that, to me, was phenomenal was the new personalized video. Now you are a pioneer in this area. How did this evolve?

Dr. Jacob Aizikowitz: We saw customers of XMPI in the cross media space. We saw customers that are doing things in video and video personalization by using their own skills and their own programming based on our platform. We also saw the evolution of video and we felt that we needed to bring video to their fold because we aim to be one-to-one in one so all the media we want to handle it. And given our thinking at some point we got to the point and said, “Hey, let’s use Adobe AfterEffects as the platform similarly to the way we used Adobe InDesign as the platform and Photoshop and we simply built plug-ins to AfterEffects and some other component because you render the ****, the final rendering of movies and, you know, out of almost nothing we got something very impressive and we started hearing a lot of excitement around this offering.

Frank Romano: And I was impressed also by the numbers they gave out yesterday that XMPI is used in 85 countries. I mean this is very impressive having met you when you first developed the program. Would you say that the digital video, the personalized video is gaining traction around the world or are you only seeing it in developed countries?

Dr. Jacob Aizikowitz: Well it’s – I guess I’ll say the developed countries. I think most of the direction that we see right now is in North America and maybe also in Europe. I’m not sure at this stage. But it’s an early stage program for us so we see, first of all, positively surprising customers of ours that are printing and other things. They also have people that know how to do the after effects so they’re actually excited by going into video. And our thinking is that with the offering that we have we will be able to expand our reach out of the regular market and into the community of, you know, after effects users. Maybe in broadcasting. Maybe in some other applications that are not so much related to even cross media printing.

Frank Romano: Well it certainly opens up new markets for printers and that’s always a very good thing.

Dr. Jacob Aizikowitz: Yes.

Frank Romano: So this has been a very exciting meeting. I just love the energy that’s here, the interaction between users and I’m glad I had a chance to come. Thank you very much.