SGIA hosted an amazing inaugural FP3: Functional Printing, Process & Products conference in Chicago! Charged with high-level conversation and networking among many thought leaders from the industrial printing community — with the added comedy from Second City and M.C. Don McMillan — this new conference was a well-rounded event that already has attendees asking about next year!
Engineer-turned-comedian Don McMillan had the group rolling in their chairs during his presentation, where he shared charts, diagrams and other humorous takes on our industry, spoofing printing terminology and what it means to be a printer. Don even managed to somehow get a hold of my high school yearbook photo and concluded that my rapper name should be "Big Data." It had the audience roaring with laughter!
On a more serious (but intriguing) note, keynote speaker David Hogue, Ph.D. of Google gave a presentation which dove deep into UX (User Experience), sharing psychological insight on Human Machine Interface (HMI) design. Hogue stressed HMI design's connection to user habits and discussed how ingrained understanding is crucial to the design process.
The conference concluded with a tour of M&R's nearby manufacturing facility. We got to see first-hand how M&R has innovation ingrained in its DNA. Founder Rich Hoffman and newly appointed CEO Danny Sweem welcomed us to their plant and openly shared techniques and reasons for why everything operates the way it does. M&R ships eight machines per day, including presses, dryers, screen making equipment and their Novus line of digital printing equipment! It was very inspiring to see this manufacturing facility, which produces many different types of machines while handling metal work, welding, painting and assembly all under one roof.
In our printing industry, we are introduced to so many conferences covering a wide variety of topics. With SGIA's FP3 Conference, they have shown how a focused event specially designed for a certain segment (in this case, industrial printers) can have great influence on the way people operate. We are very excited about the positive feedback for FP3 and are ready to invest in the growing opportunities that it presented!
Click here to watch the #FP3Conf recap video: https://youtu.be/Q9VZuPQ6X8g