As you might imagine, here at PrintWeek we hear all sorts of rumours, all the time. Some of these rumours turn out to have as much substance as a cheesy Wotsit, others turn out to be fact. And last week PrintWeek’s editor Darryl Danielli was able to nail down the “Drupa could change to three-year cycle” rumour by turning it into an actual fact. That story has gone all around the world, and on its way it has caused a great deal of comment, not least about the potential impact on Ipex. Eighteen days from now, Drupa’s advisory committee will be poised to make a real Caesar’s thumb decision about the future of that exhibition, and by definition the future print expo landscape in Europe and probably beyond. I can see why it would suit Messe Dusseldorf to run Drupa every three years, neatly dovetailing with its other big shows. And tactically, if they wanted to deal a blow to their biggest local competitor, this news could not have come at a worse time for Ipex. I’m less certain about how exhibitors will view this potential change. Exhibiting at Drupa involves a significant spend, or a colossal spend, depending on who you are. At the moment Drupa is the one show where you are guaranteed to see a whole host of seriously hefty print equipment actually running. Would that still be the case if Drupa was more frequent, and a shorter duration? Would it still be the case anyway? How much money will exhibitors need to save on a shorter show to make it feasible, budget-wise? It will surely need to be more than the 21% saving in ‘days’. I’m imagining some serious spreadsheet action going on in the background, here, mapping various different scenarios. It’s also interesting in the overall context of a changing landscape for exhibitions. Look at HP’s decision to focus spend on events targeting specific verticals, and on its own customer events. And then we have something like the Hunkeler Innovationdays, which has grown into a must-attend for companies operating in the transactional and print-on-demand print space. This event is actually getting bigger, and will be five days rather than four in 2013. And all funded on a sort of co-operative basis without profiting an exhibition organiser. Thumbs up, or thumbs down? The 22 members of Drupa's advisory committee will be both judge and jury on a big, big decision about print's own calendar.