Dscoop Imagine leaves mark on Phoenix

For the 12th year in a row, Dscoop – a community of HP users across a variety of print platforms – gathered for a three-day long conference that featured more than 100 educational sessions, a showcase of printing equipment and keynote speakers designed to engage and enthuse the crowd.

According to Dscoop organizers, more than 2,000 print and market service providers attended the event, which took place March 1-4 in Phoenix, Arizona, under the theme ‘Imagine.’

During his keynote address, HP Indigo general manager Alon Bar-Shany discussed HP’s role in the print supply chain, after the company returned from a successful drupa year. Post-drupa, HP now has 20 sites with the HP Indigo 8000 digital press. The HP Indigo 8000 combines two Indigo WS6800 digital print engines for double the speed. The HP Indigo 8000 was launched at the show and made commercially available at Labelexpo Americas 2016.

Bar-Shany discussed HP’s latest technological developments, and of interest to those in the labels and packaging realm is the Pack Ready laminating system that currently is being tested at some commercial sites. Pack Ready is a set of post-print converting options for HP Indigo digital presses that provides zero-cure-time lamination. The company calls it ‘a game changer’ for the flexible packaging market.

‘I predict we’ll have quite a few HP Indigo WS6800 users take on this laminator, build up their business and then add an HP Indigo 20000,’ said HP’s Roy Oomen, category manager for the Pack Ready system.

HP’s Digital Combination Printing concept with JetFx also was on display at Dscoop to much curiosity and interest from those who stopped to see it in action.

Inspiring speakers

Other keynote speakers included Billy Beane, Oakland A’s general manager and creator of the Moneyball philosophy. Beane discussed leveraging big data to win baseball games. Before he and his Ivy League-educated analyst applied statistical analysis to player acquisition, those decisions were made on gut feeling rather than hard data.

‘We were mispricing baseball players and their skills for years. We were undervaluing players,’ Beane said.

Instead, the team started delving into data, and the Oakland A’s under Beane’s leadership went on to play in the playoffs in 2002 and 2003, despite significantly less money spent on players than other Major League Baseball teams. The Cinderella story was the subject of the 2003 book ‘Moneyball’ and a 2011 movie of the same name.

John Foley, former pilot for the Blue Angels, offered an inspiring talk on building high performance teams. Foley always dreamt of being a pilot, and twice was rejected from the military before being accepted into the Navy’s elite flying demonstration squadron. ‘Just like in business, you better have a strategy, you better have a plan,’ he said. ‘You have to connect the heart and the head, otherwise there’s a lot of unrealized dreams out there.’

Finally, Doug Lipp, former head of the Disney Training Institute, discussed unleashing creativity through the magic of imagination.

Educational sessions featured a variety of experts including those from HP and its partners, as well as converter members who all offered their perspective on production and operations, color management, workflow, sales and marketing and more.