The forum celebrates the best of the digital book printing marketplace, and points to new trends and technologies that have affected it in the past year. It will be held at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Portland Place, London.
This year, there will be a special seminar looking at the impact of Drupa 2016 developments, with panellists including Collins Learning production director Arjen Jansen and PrintonDemand Worldwide managing director Andy Cork.
Interquest president Gilles Biscos will introduce the day with an overview and analysis of the key trends and developments currently occurring in the digital book market. He said this year the focus has been to to attract speakers from around the world.
Biscos said: “We have done a number of events in Europe so we have all the contacts and are trying to bring the best of what we see at these events. The book market is evolving but there is no revolution so we couldn’t just do an event in the UK with UK speakers every year.
“But if we bring people from other countries to bring some new ideas, talk about new opportunities and share with UK printers, I think that adds a lot more value.”
After the Drupa discussion, international printers and publishers, including production team leader of Dutch publisher Brill, Emile Kranendonk, and Kösel sales and marketing director Ivo Odak, will share experiences and insights of the digital market.
Biscos said a main theme in the discussion will be the development of inkjet, in terms of print quality and running cost, and there will also be a continued focus on Drupa developments.
Later in the day, speakers including Canon sales and marketing director Oliver Baar and Ricoh vice-president Benoit Chatelard will discuss these more recent developments in the market.
Biscos added: “We want to involve printers and publishers at these events, the thing about these events is that printers and publishers don’t automatically have the same interests, the printers want more technical stuff, publishers are more interested in the business side so we are trying to find a good trade-off and compromise. That’s the idea with the panel.”
After lunch, a final session will look to the future and at some of the innovative things happening in the market, with National Gallery Company production manager Jane Hyne and others.
