Amherst, New York - Printing Industries Alliance, the trade organization dedicated to supporting the success of the New York State, northern New Jersey, and northwestern Pennsylvania graphic communications industry, today announced their initial lineup of expert speakers and panelists for their program titled “DIGITAL PRINTING THINK TANK” which will take place on Wednesday October 28th^th in Manhattan at Club 101, located at 101 Park Avenue, NY, NY at 40^th Street. 

The event’s first panel will be a group of large and small printers that cut across the digital printing market. Moderator Mark Michelson, Editor of Printing Impressions will lead the printers in a discussion that will talk about their path to the present and their path for the years ahead. It is predicted that digital printing, which launched in 1993 and is currently more than 20% of all printing, will become 50% of all printing by 2030. Panelists will include Cheryl Kahanec of EarthColor, Glen Boehmer of Sentinel Printing, Kevin McVea of SCI, Ron Sizemore of Influence Graphics and many more.

Our luncheon speaker will be Jeff Hayzlett, former Kodak CMO, Primetime radio and TV host, business author and keynote speaker. Jeff will talk on” Think Big, Act Bigger: The Rewards of Being Relentless”. The first 100 registrants will receive a copy of his latest book by the same title.

A second panel will be made up of leading marketing executives from digital printing vendors. They will discuss how they provide press owners guidance in marketing digital printing and assistance in growing the market. The vendors marketing panel will be moderated by digital printing expert Marco Boer of IT-Strategies who predicted the success of inkjet digital printing a decade ago. Panelists will include Dave Wigfield of Xerox, Marc Johnson of HP, Gavin Jordan Smith of Konica Minolta, Shawn Lawson of International Paper and Andy Fetherman of Muller Martini. To register for the event call Kim Tuzzo at 716 691 3211 or email at [email protected] The cost of an individual is $149 and includes lunch and refreshments.

The all day event will also offer a Networking Fair opportunity which will allow participants to compare notes and speak with sponsoring vendors who will distribute literature.  Vendor sponsorships include two vendor staff tickets and three tickets for their customers or prospects. The vendor sponsorship is $650 for those who are annual PIA Platinum sponsors.  A low cost conversion to Platinum Sponsorship status will be available. For sponsorship  info contact Marty Maloney at 203 912 0804 or email at [email protected] or [email protected].  Sponsors will receive a six foot draped table at the Fair and recognition through event PR, literature and signage. Early sponsorships include Xerox, HP, Muller Martini, International Paper, Konica Minolta, RedTie, and Ricoh.  

The objective of the Digital Printing Think Tank is to educate the industry in a non-biased manner as to the reasons for the rapid growth of digital printing and to explore the trends of all formats; sheet and web; toner and inkjet; and all applications including high quality short run, production run length web inkjet, labels, packaging, wide format and more. Lastly, an attempt will be made to take us to drupa in May 2016 and even to drupa 2019 and beyond.