In speaking to printers about their future and business strategies, I am amazed at some of the comments I hear. When asked, they usually mention that they base much of their decisions on various industry resources. Part two of my article is designed to help printing executives identify nontraditional resources that can help them transition into communication companies. (See Part One) My opinion is that the traditional trade shows and industry publications have not shown they are ready for prime time in this new communications era.

Trade Publications
When it comes to providing information regarding technology and it’s impact on your organization, I do not think the industry trade publications look beyond the curve in the road. They play it safe, quite often focusing on all that is good and right in the industry because of the people who keep these publications in business, their advertisers. They often over play technologies of advertisers while under playing other technologies because it might ruffle the feathers of their only source of revenue. What is missed most by the trade publications are the emerging technologies from companies outside the sphere of the traditional print industry.

When advertisers are your major source for revenue, not all that is fit to print is printed which leads to paid advertisements cleverly disguised as articles. This does not mean that any of the articles in these publications are false or poorly written, only that you might not get the entire picture.