I made the trek out to Las Vegas this past week to attend the Indigo Customer Exchange (ICE) annual meeting, both as a judge for the ICE Awards and to cover the event for WhatTheyThink. As many of you will remember, ICE has been in existence for over a decade as a vendor-supported but independent user group for (now) HP-Indigo owners, and earlier this year, HP withdrew its support for the organization in a move that surprised many industry watchers. In part, that was what made this meeting interesting, because in the absence of HP, both Xerox and Kodak decided to throw their support behind the event and the organization as premium sponsors. We were interested to observe the member reaction to the Kodak/Xerox presence, as well as to learn first-hand where the organization is headed in the future.

This is Part One of a two-part series. In Part Two, we will take a look at the state of user groups in general in our industry—which ones still exist, what does their future look like, and what is their value proposition for both the users and the vendors.

Las Vegas: What Happens Here Doesn’t Stay Here…