EskoWorld 2013

I was at EskoWorld 2013 in blazin' Phoenix AZ. They started things up Sunday morning with a variety of hands-on academy sessions. Sunday afternoon kicked off this years program with an Esko keynote from Carsten Knudsen (CEO of Esko), a review of the Strategic Focus Areas and Roadmap for 2013, a panel allowing each of the Partners a moment to briefly highlight what's new an interesting from each of the table tops, and a special Keynote with Bill Capadagli about The Disney Way. Some interesting facts for this year's EskoWorld:

• New record attendance, 600+!
• 443 were non-Esko attendees, with about 320 customers in attendance.
• This year they will have about 100 sessions during the 3.5 days of EskoWorld.
• Simon James was honored and came in riding on a massive bull! Cool right! Simon is a pioneer within Esko who retired earlier this year. In 2000, he was named one of the “Fifty Most Influential Packaging Leaders of the 20th Century.”

• FACT: There are not many strong mechanical bull riders in this industry.

2012 Achievements:

• Latin America grew by 29% last year.
• 8% increase in revenue.
• 1101 new Esko customers joined the movement.
• Suite 12 launched, with loads of new features and capabilities.
• Released the next generation, XN series, Kongsberg tables.
• HD Flexo was in full release and is now becoming an industry standard.
• Since Esko's entrance into the Flexo market with the CDI Spark they have, to date, sold about 2,350 CDI's. Today there are about 500 HD Spark units (with 250 customers)

Some Highlights for 2013:

• AE 12.1 expected to release towards the end of June.
• More improvements for Studio such as easy compositing, more possibilities for labels and pre-distort options.
• WebCenter Viewer will incorporate a braille and barcode reader.
• i-Cut will have 20 new POP displays, dynamic drafting and tiling and steel counters for making dies.
• In prepress, they continue to work towards a unified solution, combining all the best of ArtPro, DeskPack and PackEdge.
• Continued enhancements for PowerTrapper, such as bi-directional trapping, are on the horizon.

These are just a few of many new things expected for 2013...