Live from the 2008 Lyra Imaging Symposium in Rancho Mirage CAIt used to be that I'd try to pick a popular song name for the title of each and every blog post I did, but that got way too hard. So now I just call 'em like I see 'em, to use a well-worn (and probably ill-fitting) cliché!
As always, the information at Lyra comes fast and furious and it’s always at least a little tough to keep up, whether as an attentive attendee or guest live blogger. But here’s a brief summary of yes, Tuesday Afternoon.
We had a two-part module directed on the SMB market (which we would hear later, in the Wall Street panel, is the apple of every tech segments eye (oops there’s another one). Jim Rise, VP and GM of Xerox’s (NYSE XRX) Solid Ink Products Business Unit, talked about how their products, in a presentation entitled “The Outlook on Affordable Office Color Printing”. He presented the business side of how Xerox seeks to make color documents the obvious choice of its users, by making color prints cost the same as black and white. Larry Jamieson of Lyra followed, with “Finding the SMB Peripheral Sweet Spot”, where as a footnote we heard the second Wikipedia reference of the conference. (Larry’s definition of the term, gleaned from the popular online encyclopedia, was a good one!)
The next module turned more technical, first with Jim King of Adobe speaking on “The Future of PDF and Documents—The Next 15 Years”. Jim’s a fellow blogger, by the way, and his “Inside PDF” blog can be found at http://blogs.adobe.com/insidepdf/. A panel including King followed, looking ahead at PDF, XPS, and other file format and printer software matters, included Moderator: Martin Bailey, CTO, Global Graphics Software; Kevin Andresen, Director of Product Marketing, Print Language and Driver Software, Zoran Corporation; Craig Graw , Software Imaging; John Ingraham, Technical Consultant, QualityLogic; Jim King, PDF Platform Architect and Senior Principal Scientist, Adobe; Steve Martin, Vice President of Engineering, Monotype Imaging; and RanDair Porter, President and CEO, Pagemark Technology, Inc.
As the afternoon progressed, we had a “Global Spotlight” session that featured Lyra analysts Peter Mayhew and Jiqiang Rong, providing current updates on printer and supplies markets in Europe and China, respectively.
The day finished with the always rousing Wall Street panel, moderated by Ann Priede and including Ananda Baruah, Vice President, Research Analyst, Banc of America Securities; Shannon Cross, Principal, Cross Research; Bill Fearnley, Jr., Managing Director, PC and Enterprise Hardware, FTN Midwest Securities Corporation; Rich Gardner, Managing Director, Citi Investment Research; and Jay Vleeschhouwer, Managing Director, Merrill Lynch. This part of the symposium is always worth hanging in for (maybe that’s why the organizers make it the last agenda item of the day!) and is difficult to summarize, to say the least. One takeaway though is that this group is not at all convinced economic doldrums are close at hand. With indicators like this year’s record Symposium attendance along with a high level of enthusiasm for the business would seem to go along with that.
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