Miamisburg, OH (USA), – EskoArtwork announces that the recently concluded EskoWorld user conference was an absolute success, offering a record 350 attendees a peak into the company’s future products, and a wide variety of industry outlooks, product presentations and roadmaps, and workshops for anyone with an interest in packaging, displays, and printing.

“Feedback from everyone is that the 2011 edition of EskoWorld is the best they ever attended,” enthuses Mark Quinlan, President, EskoArtwork North America. “The program offered attendees both hands-on sessions and presentations to help them make the most of their EskoArtwork products — and understand where EskoArtwork will take them in the future. We are confident that anyone who attended EskoWorld returned with a list of productive, actionable items.”

Following a welcome from Simon James, EskoArtwork VP Marketing, Carsten Knudsen, EskoArtwork CEO, presented the State of the Union, also offering a glimpse of new applications available in the near future for web based collaboration with iPhone and iPads.

Bernard Zwaenepoel, EskoArtwork Senior VP Software Business offered a market overview of the various packaging ‘eco-systems’ —markets where EskoArtwork products fit— including narrow web, labels, flexible packaging, corrugated, commercial print, sign & display, and others.

Sessions for everyone

“Our company has had a long-standing relationship with EskoArtwork since 1998, when we decided to buy our CDI with all of the supporting workflow tools. Since then, our entire prepress workflow system has been built with EskoArtwork products,” recalls Sebastian Longo, President, Fotograbados Longo S.A. in Avellaneda, a Buenos Aires suburb in Argentina. Because of this long-term relationship, we decided to visit EskoWorld to see what is coming but, more important, how to make our current tools even more productive. The hands-on sessions, product roadmaps, and Open Labs were the keys the program. It was very important for us to have conversations with all of EskoArtwork’s staff, but the most amazing thing is what all of them asked me, from software to hardware: ‘What do you need? How can we help you?’ We were happy to be there.”

A total of 19 product-related presentations were held. Those offering insight into the education of packaging in universities, in particular ‘Graphic Arts and Packaging Universities - Educational Update’ and ‘Graphic Arts and Packaging Universities’ were well attended. The 28 EskoArtwork Academy activities, mostly hands-on sessions and product features presentations, were very popular. For example, ‘Jobs and Products in Automation Engine 10’, attracted more than a hundred people. Nine plenary sessions offered attendees an overview of industry issues. Not surprisingly, the MIS Roundtable was a highlight.

A wide perspective from a variety of outside speakers

The keynote speaker was Danny White, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback, who offered an inspiring motivational speech. White’s leadership skills as a quarterback were evident when he broke the Dallas Cowboy’s single season touchdown passing record in his first year as a starter (1980). He still holds eight Cowboys records. Using video from actual plays, White offered a correlation between challenges he faced on the field to ways that anyone can successfully make the most of difficult — or unplanned — circumstances.

Other guest speakers and participating sessions included:

Dennis Young, CPP, Michigan State University: Graphic Arts and Packaging Universities

Ian Pike, Sun Chemical: Brand Color Communication with SmartColour - a use case

Minal Mistry, Project Manager COMPASS® (GreenBlue) and Ramsey Fisher, CPP Packaging Design Manager, Malnove Packaging & Packaging Solutions: Producing for a greener world. Contributions by Sustainable Packaging Coalition and Compass

Aaron Mallory, HP and Glenn Gross, AGFA Dotrix: Adopting Digital Print: Contributions from HP Indigo and Agfa Dotrix

Rich Emmerling, Flint Group Flexographic Products, Cori Devlin, DuPont, Colleen Twomey, MacDermid Printing Solutions: Flexo Plate Technology: Roundtable with DuPont, Flint and MacDermid

Participating in an MIS roundtable were Andy Armitage, SolarSoft, Mike Rottenborn, Hybrid Integration, and Paul Bengtson, EFI Radius

EskoArtwork partners

“This was my first EskoWorld conference, and I was pleased with the experience,” comments Joseph Maurer, Prepress manager, Collotype Labels in Napa, California. “I appreciated the interaction with EskoArtwork management, as well as product developers. The sessions I attended included presentations that showed future product roadmaps, in-depth technique seminars as well as open labs with production technicians available for help. I especially appreciated the ability to offer input to guide product development. I also spent some time in the Partner Pavilion and made valuable connections with other key individuals in the industry. This all holds a lot of value to us.”

As in past years, EskoArtwork was fortunate to have a number of partners participate in EskoWorld’s Partner Pavilion. Sixteen companies (AGFA, Bobst, Cape Systems, DuPont, Dassualt Systems, Dr. Lauterbach & Partner, EFI, enfocus, Epson, HP, Hybrid Integration, ITC Infotech, MacDermid, Strata, SunChemical, and TOPS) benefitted from a well-attended flow of attendees.

In my opinion, EskoWorld was very helpful for the first-time attendee. It was all very informative and I learned a lot in those three days,” remarks Ben Camacho, Protagon Display Structural designer in Toronto, Canada. “The ArtiosCAD design tools tips were helpful — the hands-on ideas I got from the workshops in front of the workstation. I ventured off to the Partner Pavilion and ended up at the Kongsberg finishing system area. I asked general questions and asked for assistance for ways to help me out. Everyone was open and willing to chat about things.”

EskoWorld 2012 is planned for June 16-19 in New Orleans, LA.