Inevitably there’s a desire to label each Drupa that comes around with some sort of overarching theme.

Looking back on what was a very upbeat Drupa 2016, my observation is that any theme would really depend upon who you are, and what’s important to you and your business.

For example, for anyone with the remotest interest in corrugated packaging, it would be ‘the corrugated Drupa’ as suppliers were falling over themselves to announce new solutions for this part of packaging print.

But for lots of printcos, such market-specific advances will be completely irrelevant.

Perhaps more pertinent, and for more print bosses, would be the official Print 4.0 ‘megatrend’ theme of connectivity and networked solutions.

It seems to me that the benefits of connected workflows originally envisaged back in the early 1990s, and that eventually morphed into CIP3 and then JDF, really have become a reality in 2016. And the connections have extended beyond the factory floor.

At Drupa I saw a Muller Martini system where an order placed via an internet retailer would arrive directly at the equipment that would print and bind the required book. And then the next one after that, in a different format, and the next, and so on.

I’m also reminded of Komori’s ‘Printroom 2000’ vision of the automated print operation. Sixteen years on, we’re definitely getting there. Indeed, some printcos really are there now.

Seeing the Heidelberg ‘push to stop’ demonstration involving an autonomous printing press that makes decisions for itself – no doubt faster and more accurately than any human – also provided an eye-opening taste of things to come.

And for me that was another important aspect, if not theme, of the show.

The difference between the sort of print technology that represents the buyable, installable, making-money-outable here and now, and those as yet unavailable products (Landa being the obvious example) that hold out the promise of something to come.

All in all, it was the ‘exciting’ Drupa from where I sat. So many business possibilities now, and many more on the way.