Members of the PrintCity Alliance have announced their first 'ambassadors', reflecting significant individual and project achievements during 2009 & 2008. With award presentations made at the PrintCity Annual Congress near Munich, the membership has honoured:
 
·  Erik Ohls of UPM – PrintCity Ambassador of the Year 2009
·  Pre-drupa Media Event – PrintCity Project Ambassadors Achievement 2009
 
All PrintCity member employees could nominate the potential award winners. The awards are to encourage individual member employees to increase their usage of their alliance and gain benefits for their own company.
 
Erik Ohls – Erik was nominated for his involvement in many recent initiatives within the PrintCity Alliance, both in activity groups, projects and special activities. Additionally it reflects his involvement in the alliance since its beginning 12 years ago, plus his drive to encourage members to focus on 'Connection of Competence' knowledge sharing and synergies.
 
Pre-drupa Media Event – This event for 50 editors & journalists from Europe, America and Asia took place just prior to drupa at Tegernsee, near Munich, and was the first ever held by the PrintCity Alliance. Ten member companies worked together to create a 3 day interactive briefing, which attending journalists commented was the best pre-exhibition event of its type. PrintCity members involved were: manroland, Océ, Sun Chemical, UPM, Leonhard Kurz, MEGTEC, M-real, Procemex, Sappi and Trelleborg.
 
Erik Ohls, Director of Technical Sales, Paper Business Group, UPM commented on his PrintCity Ambassador of the Year Award, "It is always nice to get recognition for work in which you strongly believe. You can't achieve very much if the company, superiors and colleagues are not supporting the work. I would like to underline this.
 
"With PrintCity Alliance work we have been able to enlarge the network and our connections within the graphic industry. From all this our customers also benefit. I am still of the opinion that the cooperation between the PrintCity member companies has only scratched the surface. There is a lot more we can achieve together in the future."
 
Awards Judging
Both awards categories were judged by 5 independent individuals/groups:
Academic vote: Professor Matt of the Hochschule der Medien, Stuttgart
Consultant vote: Dr Wolfgang Jeschke of GC Graphic Consult GmbH, Munich
Media vote: Mike Hilton, Graphic Repro On-line, St. Petersburg
PrintCity Advisory Council vote: One combined vote
PrintCity Communications Steering Group vote: One combined vote