I had breakfast with Jack, one of Roland DGA’s service managers this morning. We do this occasionally when he is in town from his home base of Wisconsin, and since greasy spoons are in pretty short supply here in southern Orange County, we always seem to wind up at The Snooty Fox. If you’re ever visiting us for training or a demo, I recommend it.

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I don’t know about your office, but ours runs at 100mph for most of the year. I’m sure you can relate. If it’s not a tradeshow, it’s a product launch. If it’s not a product launch, it’s budget time. If it’s not budget time, it’s a web redesign. And so it goes. The best part is, that no matter how busy we are, we always manage to squeeze in a little fun, mostly due to our quirky staff. Last week for example, the Occupy movement set up camp, right in our department! (Notice Romie, our web guy. He’s a total Mac-head and he made his “iProtest” sign on his iPad.)

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Laissez les bons temps rouler! Just got back from New Orleans and the 2011 SGIA tradeshow. Attendance was solid at over 16,000 (final numbers to be published soon) and — a stat I have a hard time believing — 35% were 1st time attendees to the show. Having new eyes on everyone’s products is a good thing for everyone including Roland DGA. While people weren’t stamped with a “1st Time Attendee” badge on their forehead (and I’m lobbying for it in the future) it meant that we had a great opportunity to make a first impression on everyone that we met at the show.

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Everyone loves a good story. Which is why whenever we’re not launching new products, we try to feature our customers’ work in our advertising and public relations. It’s our belief that seeing and reading about what a customer has done with their Roland DG inkjet, vinyl cutter, engraver or milling machine is far more engrossing and believable than us tooting our own horn.

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You know it’s fall when trade shows seem to be back-to-back all the way through October, and 2011 is no different. GraphExpo’s been around for some time now, and while it’s changed (see Jim Raffel’s blog about the history of Graph Expo), this year was a good show for us with quite a bit of interest around our VersaUV lineup with a specific interest in what LED-UV curing inks allow you to print on. Packaging and labels were high on the interest list, as well as being able to print onto commercial print stock for proofing. Also at the show, we had the VS-series units showing metallic proofing applications, which really pave the way as a replacement of aging Kodak Approvals out in the field (at a dramatically lower per print cost).

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by Matt Richart, Digital EFX Wraps

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Ever run into the limit of 250 copies in VersaWorks? This little obstacle can be easily overcome by adding the same job twice to Queue A or Queue B and nesting both instances of the same job. Once nested, double-click on the “Nest” and enter 250 copies for each instance (of the same file) in the queue. You now have 500 copies of the same object. It’s that simple!

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Dealing with files that have multiple paths doesn’t have to be a nightmare.

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As a GX-24 or GX Pro owner, you may keep your machine in a shop or warehouse environment where the dirt can accumulate pretty fast. Aside from the “ick” factor, a dirty environment can build up static, affecting cut quality. The perfect solution for the mess? A catch basket to protect the graphics and a machine cover to protect the technology! These affordable accessories, made from durable thick nylon materials and powder coated steel for long life, will keep dirt away from the machine that drives your business. Purchase these and other GX accessories from your authorized reseller or directly from the Roland DGA Store.

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Back when I was in high school, our favorite burger joint advertised its secret sauce. Whatever it was made from, it gave their burgers a decidedly different taste than other hamburgers. Today, marketers often talk about successful brands having a “secret sauce” – and they’re not talking about fast food. For Apple, their secret sauce is not only inventing groundbreaking products, but packaging them in a way that is simplistic to the point of seeming obvious. As Jonathan Ive, Apple chief designer says, “It feels almost inevitable.”

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