More than 1,500 users of HP Indigo and wide-format technology attended the Dscoop users’ group event in Dallas last week.

I was at the first Dscoop five years ago. There were a couple hundred people there and at the time I had some doubts that this fledgling group would ever amount to much. After all, it was conceived as an independent group of users of HP equipment, but it relied heavily on the support of HP itself. How independent could it be?

Obviously, the folks behind the Dscoop organization have made it work. The group does more than gather once a year for a conference and trade show. It also offers members year-round educational opportunities, peer groups for owners and technicians, online discussion forums, and discounts from “partners.” There were some 80 partners at the Dallas event, ranging from Adobe to xpdex and featuring many major players in the digital production printing arena.

Certainly, HP’s support was obvious, but the event revolved around current users and only a tiny handful of prospective buyers of HP equipment was invited. The four educational tracks (Business & Sales, Operations, Labels & Packaging, and Large-Format & Signage) offered practical content, mostly devoid of sales pitches. All in all, this was a very impressive example of how a vendor and its customers can interact for their mutual benefit.

Just now, I was looking out the window watching the snow plow clear our street. I was supposed to be on Marco Island at the NAPL Top Management Conference, but a broken airplane and cancelled flights kept me at home in West Virginia. Somehow missing out on a trip to Florida hurts a lot more when it’s 23 degrees outside with more snow in the forecast. No wonder the Roaming Gnome has cabin fever.

This is the last year for the Top Management Conference. In 2011 this NAPL event will be combined with the Printing Industries of America’s President’s Conference and the NPES Annual Meeting under the auspices of the Graphic Arts Show Company (GASC). That’s probably a wise move since there is significant similarity in the profiles of attendees at the three separate events. However, it leaves a substantial portion of the printing industry under-presented.

Entrepreneurial small commercial and quick printers are not necessarily going to be drawn to a top management or president-oriented event. They have different issues and interests. Sure, there are mutual areas of concern, but they are not “managers” nor do they think like “presidents.” They think like owners. It’s their personal hide on the line every day. The imperatives are different.

The one national venue still around for the entrepreneurial small commercial printer is the NAQP Owners Conference, which is usually held just prior to Graph Expo in Chicago. Unfortunately, it seldom attracts attendees who are not NAQP members. A large percentage of NAPL members are small commercial entrepreneurs who would benefit greatly from attending the Owners Conference. Since NAQP and NAPL have merged, it would be nice to see a major push to get those entrepreneurial NAPL folks to attend a conference much more tailored to their needs than this new combined industry gathering of presidents, managers, and other corporate types.

Do you know any printers who measure success in ways other than sales volume?

There is a letter in the February issue of Quick Printing from Tom Rockers in Independence, MO, that made a very good point. Success is not always measured in dollars. Some successes “are measured in other areas such as friendships my wife and I have made with most of our customers. You cannot put a dollar sign on that type of reward,” Rockers wrote. He also said that it would be nice to read about printers who have been successful even if they are not million dollar shops. I think that is a fine idea.

Do you know someone who measures success in ways other than sales volume? If so, let us know about them and perhaps we’ll share their story in a future issue. Remember the old adage, “Success in life comes not from holding a good hand, but in playing a poor hand well.”