Has it all been said?

One of the interesting things about going to conference's is the opportunity to talk to people and explore the surroundings of a conference find restaurants nearby etc. A part of that interest comes in hearing the topics of the conference being discussed over the dinner table with people you have met only a day or two before and sometimes people you work with for years. I find it interesting in hearing the conversations of what was missing or what the conference lacked because likely those things do not get on the evaluations after the conference. At this show I have heard a recurring theme over the last couple of days there is some great information but none of it really applies to my business or my situation. Or, "they should have..." you know...they should have talked about this... OR they should have talked about that...Or why didn't they have this company or that company at the show. Sometimes this is just "Babble" you know the kind where the person saying it doesn't really know what they are talking about they just want to hear their own voice...or their afraid of the silence that might suddenly appear around the table. Other times though there are some good ideas...the one I heard today seemed very pertinent to this particular show. Companies are using systems to purchase and track their print costs and sometimes they are not always the right system for the job. So why did we not hear about purchasing and procurement systems? Why did we not hear about processes to make your production more efficient? Or even what kind of reporting is important to our supervisors or is reporting important even? The short answer for most of this is that I think there is a wide variety of personalities in this type of work. You have creative types that by their own admission spreadsheets scare them, and then you have the analytical's, the ones that if you stuck a paint brush in their hand they would think you wanted them to paint the house! It is a tough mix in this industry and I am not saying it should be all one way or the other, I just think there isn't enough focus on the analytics, the business side of producing print the processes involved in actually take a set of specifications and turning them into a brochure. For the next few weeks I think I will try to answer some of these questions you may have walked away without answers to. I think the reporting questions are probably some of the most important questions to answer as from a system producer perspective this is always one of the first questions about our system that I get from the decision makers in a company. So I will try to start with the questions and hopefully provide some answers for your boss. So back to my original question; Has it all been said? I don't even think it's been asked yet!!!
By the Way! This is a great show and has a LOT of variety!
JG