2004 EDIWISE Customer Conference - Niagara Falls, ON, Canada

Well another conference has come and gone. A new locale, excellent speakers and a full agenda! I would like to take this opportunity to thank our presenters again for taking time out of their very busy schedules to come and talk to our attendees.

Gary Blakely from The Gazette in Colorado Springs, wowed our attendees with a very detailed and interesting presentation on Computer to Plate (CPT) implementations. Gary fought hurricane Ivan and battled against hardware disasters to present to our group, I hope that your laptop screen has been fixed!

Dave Keenan of Abitibi Consolidated Inc. impressed our attendees with his presentation on PQM. Dave demonstrated how Suppliers are using the data from PQM with ease to pinpoint problems within the mills and pressroom/print site floors and quickly resolve them. I hope that at our next meeting we will be able to show how pressrooms are using this data as well. Bruno Tremblay of Abitibi Consolidated Inc. gave a presentation on the future of newsprint, something that everyone in the room was anxious to find out more about. Pan Asia appears to be the place to be!

Our own Tom Cruise...I mean Allen Pyburn, astonished the audience with his presentation on RFID and it's future in the Newsprint industry.

We also had many breakouts and free training, something that EDIWISE does not offer very often; actually we've never offered this before.

For those of you that could not attend, we hope to see you next time.

Joanne Bero

2002 EDIWISE Customer Conference
At the May 2002 EDIWISE Conference, attendees were treated to great presentations by some of the key players in the management of newspaper supply chains:

Jennifer Dolan, Vice President Forest Products, The New York Times Company
Dan Dowis, General Manager Knight Ridder Shared Service Center
Sharon Hite, President and General Manager Scripps Howard Supply

Jennifer Dolan informed the audience of how the New York Times Company is using AbiNet™ASP to help streamline their supply chain including automation of the payment process. Jennifer also discussed how an internal team had been put in place to prioritize and phase in new functions to ensure that the New York Times Company could realize the benefits available from the tool.

Dan Dowis presented to the audience how Knight Ridder implemented AbiNet™ASP to help the company centralize its supply chain management processes. Dan illustrated how AbiNet™ASP allows Knight Ridder to easily manage paper both at the roll detail level, as well as the corporate level, using the same tool. He also stressed the importance of the people side of any I.T. project. In other words it’s not just a “technology issue.”

Sharon Hite shared with the audience how Scripps Howard Supply uses the AbitRol^® Production and Waste module to help control waste at Scripps Howard sites. Included in her presentation were a number of very practical ways to implement an efficient production and waste-tracking program at any print site as well as a video illustrating the process. Efficient management of waste saves big bucks at Scripps every year.

EDIWISE was honoured to have such prestigious individuals share their thoughts and experiences with us at our conference this year. For those of you who were unable to attend, you missed an opportunity to hear first hand how our customers are using EDIWISE products and services to help solve real supply chain issues.

2001 EDIWISE Customer Conference
Due to the tragic events on September 11th the EDIWISE Customer Conference for 2001 was cancelled. As we watched the news with horror here in the office we hoped that our customers were safe. As luck would have it, all but one of our customers were on the ground and had not started their travel to Toronto. Jim Balch, from St. Petersburg Times, and his family were in the air during the disaster and landed in Detroit for their stop over which turned into a much more lengthy wait than anticipated but they landed safely and actually found their way to Toronto (I’m not sure how they managed to get across the border but I guess that is a discussion for next year’s Customer Conference).

We had five customers already in Toronto for the pre-conference training, Ruth Abernathy and Carolyn Braswell from The Dallas Morning News and Lori Voorhees, Bob Palmer and Joe Ogan from the Orlando Sentinel. These folks were stuck here until Thursday when they rented cars and started their lengthy journeys home

Everyone here at EDIWISE breathed lengthy sighs of relief as we heard from each customer on September 11th because that meant you were all safe.