The second FuturePrint Virtual Summit, which took place from the 12th to the 16th of October, saw more than 3,900 delegates from over 80 countries register to attend, extending its international reach following June’s successful inaugural event . A month on, FM Future’s Frazer Chesterman caught up with Roland Biemans of LMNS, who hosted sessions on inkjet in manufacturing and interior décor, IPIA’s Brendan Perring, who carried out many of the interviews on the Commercial Print-focused day, industry analyst Pat McGrew, who spoke about transforming your way to more profit, and Karis Copp, who led the Young Guns in Print day, to find out their key takeaways from the second summit. Read on for a snapshot of their conclusions, and watch the wrap up session full for their thoughts in full.

Pat McGrew

On the event’s organisation – “I was blown away by the curation. I know that it's never easy to put together the right combination of speakers and topics and to figure out who's going to be interested in what, but I've been around a while and I learned something every day, and it was in areas that I was curious about but would not normally have had access to. I think the other thing that caught me was that woven through everything was an understanding that there are more applications available to a printing organisation than they might currently be thinking about.”

Karis Copp

On ‘Young Guns in Print’ – “Seeing the numbers on how many young people attended was fantastic. We all know that younger people who tend to be more junior may not have as much access to the education that you see at a trade show, and so to have that democratisation of that information is amazing. One of my takeaways was the issue of retention; we talk about attracting young people to the industry, but if we really want to focus on retention, we need to think about making sure our workplaces are places in which talented young people want to stay, by creating company cultures that address work/life balance, and that are authentic.”

Brendan Perring

On industry trends – “There’s a real trend for SME print business that was very much focused on product delivery, having equipment in-house to produce most things themselves and only subbing out very large jobs to trade printers. COVID has very much accelerated this trend, but there is a lot more SME print businesses now divesting themselves of equipment and technology in-house, and really becoming marketing service providers, design agencies, and essentially print managers, not actual printers themselves.”

Roland Biemans

On interior decoration – “Designers can shy away from the printing, but if they knew what the industry can offer, and just by listening to the likes of Agfa, Roland DG and Erfurt who took part in my interior decoration panel session, then all of a sudden you see that there's so much opportunity in finding new application forms, short run, high quality stuff that people can just go onto the web and put in their own design, and with a little bit of help from the print companies, people can now make something for them, boosting local production for local markets.”

As replays continue to be available to view, the wrap up panel were asked to choose a recommended talk, for those that missed it to go back and enjoy. Pat McGrew advocated for Morten Reitoft of INKISH TV’s talk, ‘The Mystery of Pricing’, pointing out that many companies misprice products due to a lack of understanding. Brendan Perring suggests viewers go back and catch Pat McGrew’s session, ‘Nobody Died, But...Transforming Your Way To More Profit’, as it demonstrates the importance of a shift of mindset when it comes to correcting your course.

Karis Copp urged viewers to head to the replays list and watch ‘Falling into Print’, and as a bonus recommendation suggests the Leadership and Adaptation keynote from Funky Business Forever author Dr Jonas Ridderstråle for an entertaining talk that has something for everyone. Roland Biemans opts for his panels, ‘Integrating Inkjet Into Manufacturing: The Critical Steps’ and ‘Printed Interior Décor: An Untapped Opportunity?’ Frazer Chesterman picked Mutoh and CGS presentation, ‘New Packaging Opportunities, New Horizons’, explaining that it focuses on collaboration as well as highlighting interesting technology and applications.

FuturePrint Summit organisers Marcus Timson and Frazer Chesterman would like to again thank all speakers and attendees, and encourages the community to keep an eye out for exciting FuturePrint event updates in the new year.

Catch up on all the replays here.