June 1998, Vol. 9, No. 6

Dizzyland

Innovation returns with a dizzying array of little products at NEXPO '98

Born of his love of trains and cars and rides -- and of his love to entertain -- Walt Disney's Disneyland was a compelling landscape in my youth.

Ballyhooed on television and but a mere 400 miles from our home, to a small child buying into the dream that Disneyland was "the happiest place on earth" was not hard.

What was hard was getting there, but constant finagling finally produced a trip in 1962. It was all that I had imagined -- and more.

The only problem was that my small child's mouth -- influenced by the absence of strategic teeth -- could not get all three syllables out clearly. Hence, the Magic Kingdom came to be known in our house as "Dizzyland."

The spectre of holding the newspaper industry's annual technology trade show and conference in Orlando -- not the True Disneyland, but a reasonable facsimile -- caused me to smile the first time I thought about it.

I won't use that hoary word "synergy," but you can't deny that there will be a symbiotic relationship between nearby Walt Disney World and the 70th annual NEXPO conference, to be held June 20-23 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando.

As I pored through the materials sent in by the more than 180 pre-press exhibitors at the show (we define pre-press to mean anything from the newsroom to the imagesetter, from the accounting department to the computer-to-plate, from the ad taker to the raster image processor) to figure out who to recommend that you visit, I was reminded of my childhood's lisping reference to the Magic Kingdom.

There are so many new products, it is literally dizzying.

Over the last few years I have whined publicly about the lack of innovation in the newspaper industry. This dearth came from the chicken-and-egg problem we encountered in the early part of the decade: Publishers weren't buying anything, so suppliers weren't making enough money to invest in research and development.

Apparently the movement of the last year -- wherein a large number of newspaper executives realized that their existing systems would roll over and die on Jan. 1, 2000 -- has put enough cash into the supplier industry that it is coming out with some interesting and exciting products.

Of course, it's all detailed inside, but what struck me was the large number of small suppliers who have come out with intriguing products -- not complete solutions, by any stretch of the imagination, but a component here and a component there that could increase the efficiencies of the publishing process.

All of this will make attending NEXPO that much more difficult. Rather than being able to sit down in a couple of booths for a couple of hours and get a handle on the business, publishing executives will have to do some real mining here.

We hope that our recommendations of 65 of the suppliers, as listed inside, will help. As always, it was tough winnowing the field down -- and it was even tougher coming up with the "top seven" booths to visit (we pick seven so that if you have only one day at NEXPO, you can hit all of them without killing yourself).

As always in our NEXPO preview, we have provided a colorful map of the show floor (executed by Joe Shoulak), indicating not only our recommendations, but the logos of prominent suppliers.

At NEXPO we'll have a slightly different crew than in the past -- Correspondents L. Carol Christopher, Christopher J. Feola, Marion J. Love and George Powell will return, but Correspondent John Bryan's duties with his day job at the Los Angeles Times prevent him from helping out this year. Into the mix we're throwing free-lancers Steven Brier (formerly of the New York Times) and Russ Leseberg (formerly of the St. Petersburg Times).

Logistics and supervision will be provided by that dynamic husband-wife duo, Pete and Marge Wetmore (senior editor and circulation director, respectively).

I think Walt would be pleased with the notion that newspaper people will play with our toys and then flee to his park to play with his toys. It will be a dizzying four days.

-- David M. Cole

See also: NEXPO conference sessions, Hellbox and our annual statement of principles.

From THE COLE PAPERS, June 1998, Copyright © 1998, All Rights Reserved.