It’s not exactly raining sponsors but in some parts of the country the monsoon rains are gaining traction. Similarly the registrations come late but they are coming and so do some of the sponsorships. In the beginning of this week EFI signed up to support the Monsoon Summit. They are the fourth sponsors of the event and this strengthens IppStar greatly in organising the ISO12647 awareness conferences in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai next week.
Along with EFI, we are heartened by Canon’s support to the ISO event – the first of our four sponsors. This digital press manufacturer also supported the IPP XI Conference in Mumbai in December 2007. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that our second sponsor was Reliance Consumer Finance. This is a company that seems keen to support small and medium industry printers in their business expansion plans. And the third sponsor is x-rite and their Indian distributor AGS based in Mumbai. Thus this event represents a confluence of three types of products and services that are much needed by the printing industry to grow and to change – software and instrumentation; technical consultancy services for ISO implementation and certification; and, business services in this case – finance for business expansion.
In addition for the first time for an IppStar event, we also have the support of the printer’s associations in the three cities where the summit is being held. The Delhi Printers’ Association, the Delhi Master Printers Welfare Association, the Bombay Master Printers’ Association, the Mumbai Mudrak Sangh, the Madras Printers & Lithographers Association and Indian Print Exporters Forum. It is important for the printers associations to recognise the IppStar events as those of substantial content and take home value – challenging to put together and organise and done with minimum stress on the resources of the industry.
There are so many exhibitions, events, and conferences nowadays that it is not easy to get sponsors especially in the short time that IppStar has had for organising the Monsoon summit. We are a relatively small organisation which simultaneously produces two magazines and is also organising a human resources event at the PackPlus 09 exhibition at Pragati Maidan from 8 to 11 July in addition to the Monsoon Summit. A standardisation event is not only challenging to organise but it is needed to get not just the wider industry going but also the leaders to act on this important task.
Although the time is short to register participants, we have got organised over the last week and contacted the leading sheetfed and heatset commercial and packaging printers. ISO 12647-2 is specific to the offset printing. The response is positive and we had already received about 75 commitments and about 100 that are interested but have not yet committed their participation. There are some larger multi-locational companies that are sending as many as ten participants to the three locations. The latest segment to register is the newspaper industry. We are hoping to surpass our target of 165 and are now aiming at 180 registrations altogether. This is an important opportunity to methodically address the quality and colour management issues and implement printing process standardisation.
