Cary Sherburne: Hi, I’m Cary Sherburne, Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink.com and I'm here with at Connect 12 with Marc Olin, Senior Vice President and General Manager EFI. Welcome.
Marc Olin: Thanks Cary.
Cary: Well you should be welcoming me.
Marc: Yes, that’s right. Welcome to you. How many Connects have you been to now Cary?
Cary: You know I think you guys started – let the press start coming the year that EFI – right before EFI aquired Print café. So when was that?
Marc: That was 2003.
Cary: So I’ve been to 10.
Marc: Oh my. Well that’s good.
Cary: Out of 12.
Marc: You’re probably up there close to the most attended Connects of a non-EFI employee.
Cary: There we go.
Marc: We have one customer of ours that’s been to every single Connects since 1999, but.
Cary: Wow that’s great.
Marc: Yeah.
Cary: Yeah, so what are some of the exciting high points? I mean we just had a fireside chat between Guy and CEO of Adobe.
Marc: Yeah, Shantanu. That was definitely a special event, really be able to hear first hand a lot of the things going on with Adobe. Talked about the Apple controversy and things of that sort, and that we’re very happy to have that at Connect. And again we see Connect as an educational opportunity for the industry as a whole and that’s one example of where we really can bring some different knowledge to the industry and help them understand what’s going on.
Cary: It was interesting to me to learn that both Shantanu and Guy had worked for Apple in their past.
Marc: Yeah, that’s Apple Israel Guy worked at. That was news to me as well. I think I didn’t actually know that. But, yeah.
Cary: Kind of interesting, so now you’ve got something like 150 different educational sessions for people and you’ve got Fiery here in force this time and this is a big event.
Marc: Yes, it’s actually the largest since we’ve been part of EFI. Our first in 1999 when it was Print Café was our biggest but as part of EFI this is our largest ever and it’s been fantastic to see the customer interest over the last year and how much things have grown and people are just coming out from all the different segments of EFI. We’re having wide format people and Fiery people as well as that as the traditional apps people, Jetrion folks as well. And with the recent acquisitions now we have a big Radius contingent and print stream contingent as well. And that’s, of course, great to see them also.
Cary: That’s pretty exciting. I was talking actually to one of your customers who actually I think had Monarch and then decided that for some reason that wasn’t really working, wasn’t working for them and so they went to the print stream and now they’re back.
Marc: Yes.
Cary: You just never leave them alone.
Marc: Exactly. Well you know we don’t like to lose customers so we have to buy the company to get the customers back, you know, that’s.
Cary: So what else is big? You’ve got an auction; a second annual auction too in Connect 12.
Marc: Yes, yes. The auction was such a hit last year we decided to do it again. This was something that some of our people came up with is a unique opportunity really to give both, give the customers that opportunity to get products that they might not be ready to pay for, for full price and also to support the industry because a portion of the proceeds go to the PGSF, the Graphic Scholarship Foundation and it’s a great way for us to give something back to the industry as well as to build some excitement here because it was definitely had some spirited bidding last year. We’ve expanded it this year and we have – we know you donated some items there or WhatTheyThink.com donated some items. So we’re definitely looking forward to that, the event tomorrow.
