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  • Revenge of the Pixels: How My E-Reader Dealt a Blow
    By Karen Hall - Friday October 26, 2012
    As he handed me my birthday gift last year, my son said, “Mom, before you open this I have to warn you that I’ve committed sacrilege.” He spoke the truth. Resting inside the wrappings was a Nook e-reader. To get the full impact of this, you need to understand that when I say Bob and I are book people, it’s like saying the ocean is a tad damp. After a recent cleaning frenzy, we delivered three boxes and several large bags of books to the library for its annual fund-raiser. I have no idea where we must have put them because every shelf is still full. At any rate, I thanked my son for the gift and set it next to my comfy chair. It sat there for months. Finally, curiosity got the better of me and I read one of the books my son had...

  • NAQP Owners Conference: You Gotta Be There!
    By Karen Hall - Monday September 10, 2012
    If you haven’t yet made plans to attend this year’s NAQP Owners Conference (October 4-6 in Chicago), you’d better get on the ball with your travel plans. You certainly don’t want to miss it. Click here to sign up. I know, I know…the economy is still tough, there’s a lot going on in your business, and you’re too busy by half. That’s precisely why you need to be there. Print owners need to shake out the cobwebs. You need to be reminded every now and again that you are not just another employee in your shop. You are the leader; the one who makes the decisions and who is responsible for success or failure of your company. Once a year, you have the opportunity to take advantage of the educational sessions and the peer...

  • One World, One drupa
    By Karen Hall - Tuesday May 8, 2012
    After my sojourn to Dusseldorf for drupa 2012 there is no shortage of things to tell you about — the dilemma is knowing where to start. The theme of this year's show was "One World. One drupa." That speaks to the fact that this is truly an international trade show. I encountered people from all corners of the globe: Europe, Asia, South America, the Middle East, and Africa. Most printers in the US don't make the trek to Germany every four years, but if you have never done so, I highly recommend that you start making plans now to be there in June 2016. Being at drupa reminded me that, while the US may have the largest printing market in the world, from the global viewpoint, it is just a big region. In so many press conferences, I heard...

  • Lassen Sie Uns Auf drupa Gehen!
    By Karen Hall - Thursday April 5, 2012
    So drupa is just around the corner, and I’m brushing up on my German. Just for the record, mein Deutsch ist schrecklich, but the people I meet there are always so kind (and frequently amused) regarding my attempts to speak their language. They always seem to appreciate the fact that I’m making an effort, so with my attempts at German, their attempts at English (which are almost always superior), and a bit of sign language, we manage to communicate. This will be my fifth trip to Germany. Bob lived there for six years, so it has been one of our favorite vacation destinations. It will be very odd to be there without my husband and his translation skills. Sure, drupa is the mac daddy of print trade shows and most people on the show...

  • Top 100 Deadline is this Friday, March 16
    By Karen Hall - Sunday January 15, 2012
    By Karen Hall This Friday is the deadline for quick/small commercial printers to submit information for the 2012 Quick Printing Top 100 list. This year you will have the option of registering your company as either a small commercial or a large commercial printing firm. The results for the small commercial segment will be published in our June issue. The large commercial results will be published in August. This is your chance to have your company’s accomplishments recognized in a prestigious national forum. The marketing opportunities are second to none and all of the Top 100 companies will receive the 2012 Quick Printing Top 100 logo to use in their marketing materials. Every entrant that had 2011 sales of at least $1 million...

  • Changing of the Guard
    By Karen Hall - Thursday November 17, 2011
    I’d done it a thousand times—piloting the little Cessna 150 Aerobat through the Florida skies had become almost second nature. But on that bright spring day in 1985 my heart was in my throat as my flight instructor stepped out of the cockpit and closed the door, giving me a grin and a big thumbs up. I double checked all the instruments, pushed the throttle forward and taxied to the runway. My little bird leaped into the sky. One trip around the landing pattern and it was done—my first solo flight, and a major milestone in my life. The feeling was similar while working on the December issue of Quick Printing , which just went to the printer. Technically, Bob was still in the office, but this was destined to be the first issue of the...

  • Free Webinars: Are You Leaving Money on the Table?
    By Karen Hall - Monday September 26, 2011
    We've all heard the expression "Time is money". When people say that, they are most often talking about an employee wasting time while on the clock. But have you considered dedicating an hour to learning something that can help your company make lots more money? Printers so often pay lip service to training employees or their own continued learning, but when it's time to fish or cut bait, they find all kinds of excuses not to follow through. Considering the bounty of free webinars available lately, if you're still making excuses it may be time to take a hard look at your motivation. Money isn't holding you back—they're free. Time isn't holding you back, either. The majority of these webinars are only an hour long, and if you can't break...

  • Ramping Up for Graph Expo 2011
    By Karen Hall - Tuesday September 6, 2011
    For the Cygnus Graphics team, Graph Expo is a lot like Christmas. We start thinking about it long before it gets here because we put together and publish the Show Daily. We start making plans for it and doing the work months before the actual show begins. Then when it is almost upon us, as it is now, we wonder where the time has gone. How can it be that we’ve worked so hard and there’s still so much to do? So we scramble and somehow the last minute details fall into place at last. It’s like putting up decorations and buying presents. And all of Santa’s elves have been busy making toys. The pre-printed pages of the Show Daily have all been turned over to Quad Graphics. The video interviews have all been...

  • Goodbye to American Printer
    By Karen Hall - Monday August 22, 2011
    American Printer has been one of Quick Printing's respected competitors since QP was founded nearly 35 years ago, so I was deeply saddened to learn that it has ceased publication. In a notice on the publication's website, editor Katherine O'Brien made the announcement and traced the magazine's history, which goes back to 1928. In light of the consolidation and shrinking of the industry that has occurred during the recent recession, many of our readers understand the mixed emotions that arise when we see a competitor fall. They are magnified when the field is as narrow as the one occupied by printing trade publications. There is the rush of opportunity left by the newly opened void, but it is leavened by concern for those who are...

  • Special Celebrations
    By Karen Hall - Tuesday July 5, 2011
    Note: This blog entry has nothing whatsoever to do with printing. It's just for fun! Until the papers reported her 13th birthday, I wasn’t aware that the President’s eldest daughter was born on Independence Day. Sharing your birthday with a major holiday can go two ways for a kid – I should know – my birthday is December 25. That can be either a very happy coincidence or a miserable one. Luckily, my family cared enough to treat my birthday as an extra special bonus of the Christmas season. When clerks or TSA agents look at my ID, they often remark on my birthday. Almost inevitably, they say something along the lines of, “You must get cheated out of a lot of birthday presents.†I always explain...

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