Re: Introduce yourself!
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.
