Introduce yourself!

[Cory Smith]

This is your chance to let everyone know a little about yourself, inside and outside of your job.

I will start it off

I work for Ryder Election Services in Bend, Oregon as their prepress manager. We are a commercial sheetfed shop and a ballot printer. Presses include a recently install 4 color 40, 5 color 28" and 2 2 color 14X20's

In Prepress we run a RAMpage workflow, Javelin CTP device, Fuji plates, ORIS color and all the usual apps.

Outside of work I play paintball and spend time with the family (have a son about 2 years old)

[Mikie]

My name is Mikie. I have worked in prepress for 14 years. I generally dont like pressman, definatly dont like "vendors", and could probably do without ever speaking to ANY kind of salesperson. I really hope this move from PPF will not hinder the sense of community that I have come to enjoy with my fellow prepress operators.

I have setup 3 prepess departments in my city, and currently I am with a large company which produces printed material. That is all you need to know about that

Mikie





this is my signature. I cannot beleive I have to type this every time I post.
Note to self: "Never argue with idiots; they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience"

[Chuck_Revised]

Good Day all!

I'm a Typesetter at the end of his run. I took over a very small
business in Kansas City last fall. We started out in 1981 with
Editwriters (still have a manual and a filmstrip, wish I had a 8086
chip from one). Had some success, but my partners took the cash assets
out and we fell behind the curve. Now I'm just hanging in (I'm in my
late 50s). Still run some film for the diehard commercial printers who
are my clients.

I began in the industry in 1974. My sister was dating a lithographer,
making good money sooo... I went to the local employment service, asked
how to get into lithography. They sent me to a union, I signed up and
started work. It was 2 weeks before (ignorant, huh) I realized I wasn't
in lithography, but TYPOGRAPHY. I'd joined the International Typography
Union (ITU). Yep, hot metal typesetting. I trained on linotypes and
learned makeup and lockup. Wow have things changed!

My skills are behind the curve too. Have used Quark since 2.2 as my
primary layout program. Up to 7.0 now... also have CS3. Still prefer Quark, but I create my own PDFs for output and when I do send PDFs for final output, have had no problems. But I generally don't use transparency. Have never
worked in a major prepress shop, just some newspaper and agency
freelance work in the 90s.

PPF was a great look into the modern prepress world and I enjoy the time I spent there. I hope PP will become a community as fun and informal as PPF. When HELP! was heard, many answered.

Thanks to you all.

Chuck

[tgreer]

I've been in the commercial printing industry for 15+ years. I started and stayed in IT. (My previous career was in sales and channel management.) I started with a mid-size, privately owned printer, working with the sales force during the start of the Desktop Publishing revolution. I became part of the programming staff, and helped develop all in-house plant operation software. We didn't use any off-the-shelf software, so we wrote all scheduling, inventory, accounting, shipping, estimating and related software ourselves. I became Vice President of IT, and that was during the transition to digital printing and also the advent of the Web. I wrote the industry's first "complete" eCommerce application, with real-time PDF proofing. Today, we'd call this "web-to-print". The company I worked for was acquired by Consolidated Graphics, and thus ensued what I call the "Dark Ages", the worst two years of my life. A visionary, IT-centric person/staff is bound to fare poorly at an organization that is innovation-averse with a "why try when you can just buy" philosophy. I was appointed Director of Development, and ran a team of world class developers, many of whom have gone on to be successful programmers and business owners.I take it as a point of pride that all of the software I wrote or helped to write, is still in use today, both at CGX and previously, with many of the nation's largest companies using my system for print procurement and production.

Since CGX I've worked wholly in the data-driven printing market, as a trainer, consultant, programmer, and occasionally an employee, working primarily with small, innovative, private companies in the transactional printing, or financial, markets. I've also developed code for the PDF after market, and PostScript producer/consumer low-level systems for a variety of vendors. This work has taken me around the world, and I've literally been in over a hundred different print shops. Very recently, I was hired by Objectif Lune to fill a variety of roles across all facets of the business.

Personally, I'm an amateur guitar player, and a semi-professional poet - which only means at some point in time someone paid to publish some poems. (The most fun was McGraw-Hill: I ended up with a large spread/interview/discussion in a textbook that was in use at my kids' school.) I've been married 20 years, and have three teen-aged children, the oldest of whom just graduated High School.

I hope PrintPlanet develops active transactional and promotional data-driven printing sections. I think that transparency, accountability, and professionalism are the hallmarks of a well-run forum community. I look forward to getting to know everyone.

[Slowpockets]

I'm a bluegrass fiddler but to pay the bills I work as an operator for a small (50 employees) printing company in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains in North Georgia. I got my start in printing working for a company in Orlando, FL called Diocesan Publications working the skid end of a 6 head web press, running some two color work, shooting camera ready artwork and basic stripping of add pages. I hated it so I got out of it and drifted around doing other jobs for awhile till I went back to school for graphic design at a local technical school. I was hired on as production/design and did that with them for a few years. The opportunity to take on a position that was strictly prepress came up and I jumped on it. While I still enjoy being creative, I got tired of salesman and customers saying "Just add a big starburst to it and put a drop shadow on it". Design is so subjective and I am VERY opinionated when it comes to it. the job just wasn't working out for me, I want to create what I want something to look like, not what you want it to look like. Anyway I always enjoyed the technical side of the work so it seemed like a nice direction to head in.... little did I know :-)

Edited by: Slowpockets on Sep 2, 2007 7:32 PM

[cyclone]

Hey all,
Only a newbie to the game (10 years anyway), currently running a Komori L540SP, have run most kinds of sheetfed presses, its a c**t of a game but it pays damn well.

[Earendil]

Hi, my name is Jeremy and I am the PrePress manager at a medium sized commercial shop. We have a 19x25, 2 color Hbg, a 20x28, 4 color Speedmaster, a Hantscho, 23.5625 cutoff, heatset web with 9 units, and a newspaper web that is a mix of 3 presses containing 2 4high units for running 4 color two sides and 6 floor units on which we pull up to 6 webs with 4 color on 2 of the 6 webs.

We use Mac and PC workstations. We use Xenith Xitron Extreme workflow to drive a Screen PTR 8000 and 2 large format proofers. Well over 100 plates per day.

I started out in bindery, quickly mastered all of the equipment as well as some duplicator presses. I moved to stripping a couple of years before the world went digital so I have had a chance to work with cameras, film and manual stripping before learning a scitex film system. After a couple years of film, it was time to go CTP which brings us current.

I have 2 young boys and 2 step daughters in their teens. We are a happy family and have a lot of fun together. We are constantly outside, from camping to skiing/snowboarding, always on the go!

Oh, I migrated here with the PPF Tribe!

[trondello]

Hi everyone!
My name is Tom and I have been in Prepress and print for some time. Yup, I worked in Hot Type in High School and was in Prepress for a bunch of years working at a Service Bureau...we handled most of the most difficult to print jobs in the area.
Anyway, these days I am a Vendor! Yup!!!! I am an integrator that goes in and installs our software and helps print shops with thier work flows. So, if you have any questions based upon that criteria, I will be sure to help.
Oh, yes Im a beer drinker, Steeler /Yankee fan that has a great wife and 4 year old.

[JulieBrady]

Hi everyone! I'm Julie and am currently the marketing director at Nova Pressroom Products LLC. I was previously the marketing manager at FujiFilm Hunt for a number of years.

At Nova, we provide a full range of blanket and roller washes for the Graphic Arts industry. "You know us!" as we're all former FujiFilm Hunt employees.

In my "spare" time, I'm often found at the computer, much to the chagrin of my hubby. I'm active online with several websites, and writing lenses at Squidoo. On August 31st, I experienced my first ever "hard drive crash" so I'm building my new desktop, learning the trickery of Vista, and pulling my hair out in the process.

Hobbies? I love photography and international travel--particularly to Eastern Europe to trace my genealogy.

That's about it for now!

Regards,

?:|

Julie

[DavidMa]

Here's mine from when I first joined PPF (updated to add more years since I originally posted it):


> {quote:title=David wrote:}Hi, my name is David and I'm an achoholic.
I'm new here and I thought this would get your attention! LOL!!! (I stole that subject line from another forum!)
Just thought I would introduce myself to everyone, my name is David and I work for a large printing co here in Dallas. Been here going on 24 years now (yeah, old fart jokes start here!) I've been in the biz for over thirty years now, the last ten or twelve (it's hard to remember exactly how long, too many margaritas) in electronic prepress. Before that I was in manual stripping/camera prepress. Waaaay before that did deep etch plates and silk screen. Hope to make some friends here and help if I can. I've been poking around here the last couple o' days and have laughed a few times at the designer bashing. I feeeeeeeel your pain!!

Have fun if you can, scotch if you can't!
David
{quote}

cheers,
David

PS.

David Maberry
Supervisor/Shift Leader
Electronic Prepress Dept.
Mac - OS X 10.4.10 Dual-Core Intel Xeon
PC - XP Pro
Esko-Graphics/Scope V3
HP 5000, Epson 9600
Kodak Approval XP
Lotem 800 Platesetters
Kodak FlexCel

Edited by: DavidMa on Sep 4, 2007 10:05 AM