It may not have been Drupa, but a trade exhibition in the printing industry at the Dusseldorf exhibition centre has notched record for its first post Covid outing.
The Digital and Print Convention is more a congress than exhibition, but perhaps points the way to a future for large trade shows, Drupa included. The two-day event attracted 1,250 participants. While miniscule compared to Drupa this was 50% more than the event has previously attracted. This was the fifth occasion it had been held.
The event is held mostly in German and intended for German speaking visitors from the country itself, Austria and Switzerland. There was also participation from Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
The target audience is a younger one than at Drupa and the emphasis is on networking of ideas and people to educate a new generation of professionals in print. It was organised into nine theme worlds: sustainable production, label and packaging, programmatic print, value added printing, printed electronics, interior and exterior design, brand and product and further processing.
Each was the focus of 19 presentations over the course of two days by 50 speakers with 63 international companies as exhibiting sponsors – most with a digital flavour. An area was given over to seven projects from the media production trade association as practical examples of who print operates in the digital world.
Sabine Gelderman, the exhibition director for Drupa, is also in charge of this event. She says: “Even in the digital age, print is highly relevant and indispensable in its many facets – we want to convey this to the younger generation in particular.
“The response from students and trainees was very good. The demand for information is simply extraordinarily high. Young people want direct access to the market and want to experience live what potential print has to offer.”
Future iterations of the annual event will introduce an area to link businesses with “young and innovative newcomers”.
The growth in attendance is indicative of the increasing awareness of print’s role in the mix of marketing communication, with those exhibiting showing what is possible rather than the machines used to execute the job.
