Conference Helps Firms Adopt Variable Data Print

PIA/GATF's Variable Data and Personalisation Conference from November 4 - 6 in Phoenix, Arizona (USA) will feature an expanded array of topics.

PIA/GATF's Variable Data and Personalisation Conference from November 4 - 6 in Phoenix, Arizona (USA) will feature an expanded array of topics.

The event, now in its sixth year, is said to help printers plan strategy and learn about new approaches, applications, and technologies surrounding the increasing use of variable data and personalisation techniques in client campaigns.

Jim Workman, vice president of training for PIA/GATF, said: "The event's growth has paralleled the increase in the percentage of printed pages that contain variable data.

We've come a long way since our first conference when many still doubted the profit potential of variable data.

Now, there are close to 50,000 digital presses in the USA and Canada and owners are reporting that, job-by-job, variable data is their most profitable segment.

Our expanded content reflects that a lot of companies now have considerable experience under their belt." The Variable Data and Personalisation Conference has been reorganised in to three special seminar tracks.

They include a 'fundamentals' track for firms relatively new to variable data, a 'cross-media' track for more advanced practitioners and a 'business' track focusing on sales, marketing and performance-related issues.

In total, the conference will feature over 30 sessions covering workflow, pricing considerations, data management, collaborative selling, management information systems and metrics, trigger marketing, sales compensation and selling to vertical markets.

Those attending will also have a choice of hearing several case studies in which companies share the details of their variable data applications.

Two day-long programmes will be offered on November 4 in advance of the conference.

They are the anatomy of a variable data campaign and the web-to-print symposium, whilst in addition, a hands-on web-to-print 'boot camp' has been added on November 2 and 3.

The development of the expanded content was led by an advisory committee comprised of print providers and suppliers.

Steven Schnoll, conference consultant and managing director of Schnoll Media Consulting, said: "This year's committee did a terrific job organising the content in a new series of tracks, including advanced sessions on applying the dynamics of variable data to multimedia.

And based on their input, we're not going to finalise the content until registrants go to PURLs that we've assigned them and identify the sessions they have the greatest interest in.".

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