Unless you’ve been meditating on a mountain top in Tibet, you’ve heard about Siri, the voice-activated personal assistant included with the Apple iPhone 4S. Ask Siri to find a restaurant, make a call, or when your next appointment is, and she’ll respond appropriately. Recently, I’ve also had the opportunity to try out Kinect, the motion-sensing input device included with Microsoft’s Xbox console. Both Siri and Kinect offer user interfaces that are charming, intelligent and easy to use.

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Here in the US, the 2012 elections are almost a year away, but you can vote for Roland DG right now in what will also undoubtedly be a hotly contested race. Don’t worry, I’ll never use this space to discuss politics, but Roland DG products have been nominated for the 2012 Wide Format Imaging Readers’ Choice Top Product Awards in 5 categories.

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Well, it’s that time of year again. Among all the shopping, parties, sporting events, and other distractions, here at Roland DGA we’ve spent the last few months forecasting our sales and formulating strategies for 2012.

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We recently conducted a survey of our users who have “metallic capable” devices from our lineup, and we found some amazing nuggets I’d like to share. The survey was sent to 500+ users, with a 29% response rate, enough that the results are statistically significant. For starters, 61% of those units are set up to run our metallic Eco Sol Max inks.

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I had breakfast with Jack, one of Roland DGA’s service managers this morning. We do this occasionally when he is in town from his home base of Wisconsin, and since greasy spoons are in pretty short supply here in southern Orange County, we always seem to wind up at The Snooty Fox. If you’re ever visiting us for training or a demo, I recommend it.

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I don’t know about your office, but ours runs at 100mph for most of the year. I’m sure you can relate. If it’s not a tradeshow, it’s a product launch. If it’s not a product launch, it’s budget time. If it’s not budget time, it’s a web redesign. And so it goes. The best part is, that no matter how busy we are, we always manage to squeeze in a little fun, mostly due to our quirky staff. Last week for example, the Occupy movement set up camp, right in our department! (Notice Romie, our web guy. He’s a total Mac-head and he made his “iProtest” sign on his iPad.)

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Laissez les bons temps rouler! Just got back from New Orleans and the 2011 SGIA tradeshow. Attendance was solid at over 16,000 (final numbers to be published soon) and — a stat I have a hard time believing — 35% were 1st time attendees to the show. Having new eyes on everyone’s products is a good thing for everyone including Roland DGA. While people weren’t stamped with a “1st Time Attendee” badge on their forehead (and I’m lobbying for it in the future) it meant that we had a great opportunity to make a first impression on everyone that we met at the show.

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Everyone loves a good story. Which is why whenever we’re not launching new products, we try to feature our customers’ work in our advertising and public relations. It’s our belief that seeing and reading about what a customer has done with their Roland DG inkjet, vinyl cutter, engraver or milling machine is far more engrossing and believable than us tooting our own horn.

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You know it’s fall when trade shows seem to be back-to-back all the way through October, and 2011 is no different. GraphExpo’s been around for some time now, and while it’s changed (see Jim Raffel’s blog about the history of Graph Expo), this year was a good show for us with quite a bit of interest around our VersaUV lineup with a specific interest in what LED-UV curing inks allow you to print on. Packaging and labels were high on the interest list, as well as being able to print onto commercial print stock for proofing. Also at the show, we had the VS-series units showing metallic proofing applications, which really pave the way as a replacement of aging Kodak Approvals out in the field (at a dramatically lower per print cost).

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by Matt Richart, Digital EFX Wraps

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