I've attended quite a few vendor customer events during my years in the industry, as you might imagine, and even hosted a few.  They are typically tightly choreographed, with attendees shuttling from one PowerPoint presentation or product demo to the next so that the sponsor can convey as much information as possible during the limited time available.

This event was different, and I congratulate Mark Wendling, Director of Marketing Communications, and the Heidelberg team for crafting a flexible event that allowed attendees to focus their time where they had the most interest.  During the entire event, there was only one PowerPoint presentation.  Imagine!

The theme was "Discover HEI" building on the "HEI" theme the company has been using for the last few years:  you've seen it at shows and read it in press releases, a clever play on the company's name and reputation for quality.  At Graph Expo, it will be embodied as HEI Flexibility as Heidelberg takes to the "HEI wire" (their words, not mine) to bring their message to attendees (more on Graph Expo later).

About half of Heidelberg's employees in the US work out of the company's Kennesaw (a suburb of Atlanta) headquarters. The North American Print & Packaging Technology Center takes up a fair amount of space in the facility and includes equipment and software demo areas as well as classrooms and conference rooms. There were five formal educational sessions during the customer event, all but one of which were held in the equipment or software demo areas.  These included:

Each presentation was brief and to the point, and visitors were encouraged to stick around and talk to the experts if they wanted a deeper dive into the topic-and many did.  Overall, as I listened to the talks and observed customers and their questions, I saw a Heidelberg that is much more open today than it was a few years ago, when one almost felt there was an "everything Heidelberg" mantra, from prepress through management, production and finishing. Today's print shops are rarely single-vendor, and Heidelberg has made good strides in adapting to that reality by opening up its portfolio to third-party solutions and integration.

It sounds like the event would have been a bit chaotic, but it actually went extremely well, and the customers I spoke with appreciated the flexibility of the event.  

A couple highlights that you might want to explore at Graph Expo, if you didn't have an opportunity to do so at drupa:

While they won't be shown at Graph Expo, Heidelberg feels the investment in very large format presses (VLF) has already shown great payback. During the last three years, three companies have already returned to invest in additional presses in North America alone. "After showing a lot of trust early on, the renewed commitment of these customers proves the game-changing impact of our newly developed VLF platform " remarks Clarence Penge, Vice President of Sheetfed Product Management. "That proves that our XL Peak Performance Technology was successfully transferred into the large format".

"Our key target segments of packaging printers, point-of-purchase printers and gang runners in the web-to-print arena value the high level of systematic advantages with unique features in make-ready and production technology", reports Jörg Dähnhardt, Director of Product Management for VLF and Packaging. "In the more advanced, industrialized markets we have been able to grow our market share from 0% four years ago to more than 30% today."