The first sessions (before the morning break) are history and heres a brief synopsis:

Following Frank Stefanssons opening welcome, Keynote #1 was a strong effort, by Senior VP Corporate Communications, Product/Solutions and Channel Marketing, Ron Potesky.

His theme? Change can be good (renamed from “change is good”).

And a great point -- just what does a guy from Ricoh know about change? Plenty! Potesky’s outlined a brief history of Ricoh’s activities including acquisitions of Savin, Gestetner, Lanier, Hitachi, IBM (Infoprint, actually currently still a Joint Venture but leading to a full-fledged acquistion), and ending (for now?) with IKON in 2008. He likened the IKON acquisition to Xerox’s 2007 acquisition of Global Imaging, a large non-prorietary base of customers.

Potesky covered trends in channels (Ricoh/IKON, Xerox/Global, Konica-Minolta/Danka, Canon Grows CBS, Independent Dealer Valuation Bubble, Dealers selling at 10X earnings, Direct vs. Dealer), technology battles (Copier-based A3 vs. printer-based A4, Ink vs. laser, Print vs. display), and the business model shift (Lease and Purchase vs. Managed Print Services/Facilities Management, Break/Fix “Copier” Service vs. Cartridge Based end-user service.)

One Conclusion: Supply outweighing demand, significant consolidation. A question though -- are we in the industry DRIVING OUR OWN DEMISE?
Were offering to solve many customer problems, like lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), a focus on the environment, printing less, controlling color, all with the underlying theme of "Spend your money with us, not them…"

Potesky offered examples of brands that have adapted and those that haven’t. Andthen a good personal story of a bad example: Linotype-Hell – a market leader that didn’t pay attention to signs of change (ignoring emerging threats like desktop Postscript printers and Direct-to-Plate) in their business environment. (Hell in this case is not a place but rather an acquired company that helped take Linotype there.)

His final thoughts were:

*EMBRACE CHANGE
*SEIZE OPPORTUNITIES
*THINK BIG

And If You Take One Thing Away…
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” - Author unknown

And unlike the later presentations, there was time for a couple of questions.

Q – What makes a good acquisition? A – didn’t integrate fast enough (Savin/Gestener took seven years, Lanier also; faster integration is easier. Going much better with IKON!)

Q – A3 and A4, does Ricoh see A4 MFPs taking away A3 placements? A – Absolutely! Esp in mid- and low-end markets (sements I and ii especially). Will continue, but service model for A3 is still a good economic model, with individual parts replacements. With ink technology improved to mean less “throw away” that could change.

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Ann Priede, VP of Publications, and Charley LeCompte, president and founder of Lyra, publisher of The Hard Copy Observer and The Hard Copy Supplies Journal, then presented the first of two “Making the Grades” – Marketing and financials – based on the printer/copier portions of the business, with todays (Tuesday) based on the copier side of things. Priede offered developments and grades in sales and marketing, products, and technology, and LeCompte countered with financial metrics and grades based on revenue growth and operating profit. Companies covered included Canon, Konica Minolta, Kyocera, Ricoh, Océ, Sharp, Toshiba, and Xerox. A relatively short presentation, it was packed with data and very interesting grading outcomes! Tomorrows promises to be interesting when the eight top printer vendors are examined.

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Opportunity in Adversity: Finding The Way Forward, Willem Appelo, President Global Business and Services Group, Xerox Corporation

Look ma – No slides! The first presentation to go without the usual visual aids, but a carefully prepared pitch nonetheless.

Appelo started with the popular theme of how the economy has affected our industry, and in an optimistic view sees the benefit of the current woes as representing a catalyst to change for the better for the world economy. There’s “no business as usual” anymore and the Xerox exec drew on the company’s own near-death financial crisis of the early decade, eight years ago. He offered examples of how Xerox was forced to change and how those changes ultimately bolstered the company, in ways that are very observable today in the company’s strength (remember it’s relative, given their “C” grade for operating profits, as covered in LeCompte’s prior presentation.)
Appelo pointed to the historical customer focus among the founding leadership of industry stalwarts Ricoh and HP, along with Xerox.

Ownership of document output is typically spread across the organization – Xerox has an assessment that helps customers design a more efficient and less wasteful copying and printing, based on customer needs. Bottom line -- adapt to the customer! Trends include single function to multi-function machines, a “window to the world”. Another example is EIP, Xerox’s open platform for development, which makes it easy for partners to develop tailored solutions for Xerox machines. Lean Six Sigma is the tool Appelo credits for helping transform Xerox.

In the area of “green” Appelo described one example -- Xerox’s efforts to create a
more environmentally sensitive paper. With usage of seven hundred pounds of paper a year, per person, worldwide, and growing at least in some geographies, the making and usage of paper is an opportunity. Xerox developing a “digital paper” that would be more environmentally friendly, by using mechnanical rather than chemical means, using more of the tree and less water in the process.

Partnerships were a recurring theme in the speeceh. Outsourcing of cartridge manufacturing of cartridges to Flextronics, evolving from a simple outsourcing deal to a deep partnership today. The company’s work with UPS and creative applications was mentioned, and also their partnership in document management with IBM was touted. Sourcing around the globe is key – keeping things the same is not an option.

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Or more accurately, let the games (yesterdays tennis and golf) end (yes, we can still have a LITTLE fun), and on with the show!

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As the "official blogger" of the Lyra Imaging Symposium for a number of years now (though not all 15!), I will be at it again, but this year, over at the Imaging Insider blog. Well post a daily summary there, but offer more "real time" bite-size pieces on Twitter.

While you can keep track of my Symposium tweets in the right-hand column here, suggest a more effective way is to track the hashtag #Lyra12 on a conventional Twitter app or the web site itself (twitter.com).

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Live from the 2008 Lyra Imaging Symposium in Rancho Mirage CA

The 2008 Lyra Imaging Symposium is history, but I’m still in Rancho Mirage compiling some final notes so I believe this still qualifies a “live”, but it will definitely be the last post under that mantle.

Jay Vleeschhouwer, Managing Director, Merrill Lynch opened the mid-morning session following the Commercial and Production Printing module, with a presentation Adobe Sytems (NASDAQ ADBE) and other imaging-related software companies entitled “A Financial Analyst Perspective on Key Imaging Software Companies”. It was Jay’s turn to participate in a newer Symposium tradition, a Wall Street perspective on a particular company or market segment, that has been built on the popular and more wide-ranging Wall Street panels that close each day of the conference.

Presentations and panels from industry participants and Lyra analysts moved us into the enormous and lucrative supplies segment of our business. The discussions followed a similar agenda to Lyrass August event, which seemed cram-packed as a day-long endeavor, so todays couple-of-hours-long agenda was really a lot to take in! The presentations included “Keynote: The Way Forward—Legal Perspectives on the Digital Imaging Consumables Industry”, from Edward OConnor, Esq., Partner, Trial Division, The Eclipse Group; “Color and Cost Performance: Forecasting Toner Market Trends”, by Cortney Kasuba, Research Analyst, Lyra Research; “Beyond the Laser Bias: Inkjet Market Trends and Forecasts”, presented by Andy Lippman, also a Research Analyst with Lyra; “Changing Channels: The Supplies Distributor Perspective”, by Scott Zahl, Vice President of Vendor Management, Ingram Micro; and “The Hard Copy Supplies Journal Top Trends & Panel Discussion”, with Moderator Charles Brewer, Managing Editor, The Hard Copy Supplies Journal, Lyra Research; Rob Leonard, President, Leonard Consulting Group; Liz Leung, Director of Consumer Supplies, Epson America; and Brad Roderick, Executive Vice President, LaserCycle/InkCycle.

As we entered into the final afternoon and the home stretch, first speaker under the banner of Consumer Imaging and Digital Photography with a great presentation titled “Recent Technology Challenges in Digital Photographic Print Quality”, Catherine Fiasconaro, Vice President, Operations and Director, SpencerLab Digital Color Laboratory, tracked her well-known company’s marketing research studies probing consumers digital photo printing perceptions and habits. One of her conclusions I found very compelling and consistent with my own patterns was a shift from preferring AgX (aka Silver Halide) prints, to accepting and believing that home inkjet print quality could actually exceed that of the traditional method, to still believing it but not wanting the bother of home printing of anything but a small number of prints.

Then Steve Hoffenberg, Director, Consumer Imaging Research, Lyra Research, presented "Beyond Photo Output: Anticipating Opportunities in the Evolving Photo Culture", which offered two revenue and profit paths for the photo printing business – photo books that I’ve also covered in this blog in numerous posts, and the "Long Tail" approach to myriad specialty products that are custom-imprinted with customers’ digital images.

Steve then moderated an interesting panel from industry participants in those two areas, including Tomasz Johannsen, Director, Product Management, EZ Prints; Graham McFarland, President and CEO, ExpressDigital; and Chad Richard, Chief Executive Officer, Simple Star.

Larry Jamieson, Director, Hard Copy Industry Advisory Service for Lyra, presented his Home Printing recap, this year named “Consumer and SOHO Printing in an iPhone World”, and he was even gracious enough to use my iPhone printing anecdote (see "2007 in Review: iPhone Printing") in his opening, and offered a trend showing survey data revealing a down-turn in the home printer-to-PC ratio.

The final module of the Symposium was “Green” oriented, with the keynote, “The Greening of the Printing Industry” by Michael Hoffmann, Senior Vice President, with the (NYSE HPQ) Imaging and Printing Group’s (IPG) Supplies organization.

In stressing the importance of Green issues to HP’s customers, Hoffmann quoted a figure of 80% of Enterprise IT RFQs received in recent times include environmental considerations. He spoke to numerous initiatives especially around energy savings, both in terms of their products’ power consumption, as well as energy used by HP’s sprawling operations that surround the globe. HP is also touting decreased waste initiatives, with actions as basic as making duplex printing easier, but also promoting more efficient printing from the web (see “. Product recycling is big with HP and has been for decades, though with increasing emphasis – see today’s announcement about their conversion to manufacturing inkjet cartridges with recycled plastic. (See announcement.) Hoffmann closed with a compelling industry call to action, that will be posted here when I get the exact text.

Lyra Founder Charles LeCompte offered his view of the importance of Green issues in ” Cradle to Grave: Lyras Whole-View Environmental Impact Analysis of the Digital Imaging Industry” with a very interesting and bold presentation of the environmental “opportunity” facing our industry. Like his “Year 2000” presentation I wrote about (see "Observations: In the Year 2000...") earliler this month, LeCompte suggested some industry steps including following Hoffmann’s Call to Action or something like it.

The day and the conference closed out with the “Wall Street Watch, Round 2” panel, moderated by LeCompte and including Shannon Cross, Principal, Cross Research, and Bill Fearnley, Jr., Managing Director, PC and Enterprise Hardware, FTN Midwest Securities Corporation, and Steve Reynolds, Lyra Analyst. Kodak (who had just announced earnings earlier in the day) HP, Dell, and others were fair game during this, again, wide-ranging discussion, and the remaining audience greatly appreciated the participation of Cross and Fearnley, who with all the earnings announcements, Fed moves, etc, of the last days were seriously and admittedly a bit sleep-deprived!

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Per my post yesterday ("Entrepreneur Symposium Tonight"), I am pleased to report that the event came off like clockwork, and made me very proud to be associated with both the University of Phoenix Idaho campus as well as a member of the Boise-area entrepreneurial community.

The outstanding panelists, along with an audience which was a mix of University of Phoenix staff, faculty and students, and also a large variety of business community members, made this a very stimulating evening.

My personal thanks to panelists: the serial entrepreneurs (Faisal Shah, Steve Hodges, Aaron Stanton) and up-and-coming entrepreneurs (Lee Flinn, Alina Vaynberg and Peter Vomocil), and panel moderator and event organizer Dr. Krissa Wrigley, of the University of Phoenix.

And now? So much to think about!!!

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