Spring 2007                    return to newsletter contents page

Opportunities Are the Focus of 10th Annual Convention in Scottsdale

Dave Norton

FPPA President

I came away from last month’s FPPA Annual Convention with renewed optimism about the association and the Industry. After talking to many of you – my peers and competitors, as well as our suppliers and some of the representatives from CPCs who were present – I’m enthusiastic about the opportunities that lie ahead for us. There are opportunities for us to partner to leverage our locations and niches. There are opportunities for us to look at new technologies and underserved markets to maximize our profit and secure our future.

A crowd of nearly 100 participants helped us to break last year’s attendance mark. It was an honor being elected President of FPPA during the Convention, and a privilege to have worked closely with Jan Noller, who served the Association well this past year. Thanks to Jan for his leadership and dedication. Jan has always been a big proponent of the value in networking and sharing ideas at our conventions – truly exemplifying FPPA’s adage that “once a new member comes to one of our conventions, they’ll keep coming back.”

One of the areas that your Board of Directors has been discussing, at great length, is the need to incorporate more time into our programs for nuts-and-bolts discussion among tradeshops. We have plans to add a roundtable discussion component to our upcoming programs, as well as platemaker-led educational programs. Our Management Development Committee and Program Committee will be meeting later this Spring to begin planning our upcoming Fall Management Workshop and next year’s Annual Convention. During last month’s convention we surveyed attendees on roundtable topics that were of interest to our members. We’ll be using these suggestions to help mold our upcoming programs. If any of you have suggestions about sessions you would like to see or discussions you would like to be involved in, please contact me or the FPPA staff with your thoughts.

I would like to extend my personal congratulations to this year’s award winners: DuPont Imaging Technologies on their Supplier of the Year Award; Dynamic Dies and Flint Group Printing Plates on their Technology Innovator of the Year Awards.

Please contact me with any comments or suggestions you have at 317-522-2011 or dnorton@npp-graphics.com. Thank you for your support.