Another reorg at SII
A little more than a year after its last major reorganization, System Integrators Inc. of Sacramento has restructured once again.

In addition to organizational changes, the long-time supplier of editorial and classified systems to the publishing industry laid off 13 employees in early February; it now employs about 220 workers worldwide.

The company's Publishing Products Division -- which includes research and development as well as marketing for the System 66 product line -- has been combined with customer support. It will be run by Vice President Robert Strack, who had been in charge of the company's customer support department -- and in the late '80s was in charge of research and development.

John Cook, who had been general manager of the publishing products group, remains with SII. In a press release, SII said Cook would "take a lead role in one of the company's major development projects."

Sources close to the company said Cook would be project manager for the installation of a 650-terminal classified system at the German newspaper publisher Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ).

The company's MediaBridge division is now one of the responsibilities of Allan Katzen, who will continue to run SII's Professional Services Division. The former general manager of MediaBridge, Steve Nilan, will return to his role as vice president of business development.

MediaBridge has developed methods of taking data out of an SII front-end and publishing it in new media environments; the Professional Services Division provides custom programming.

"The new structure allows us to keep talented people in key positions," William Aaronson, SII's chief executive officer, said in a press release, "while freeing others to pursue technology acquisitions and partnerships, which will be a major focus of our product strategy in the coming year."

In a phone interview, Aaronson said he and his fellow managers were trying to understand the marketplace.

"We're trying to sort out what's happening in the newspaper industry now," he said.

Newspapers, Aaronson said, spend "half today what they spent in '89" in capital improvements.

"When you look at the short-term climate relative to newspaper buying, they didn't spend much money in the last quarter of last year and they don't seem to be spending much money this quarter," Aaronson said. "I'm trying to figure out whether it's a trend or just a short-term thing."

Aaronson acknowledged it was this uncertainty that caused the company to restructure once again. Industry observers also pointed out that six months ago, Aaronson and the SII board of directors installed a new chief operating officer, Erika Williams, and a new chief financial officer, James Williams (no relation). The changes -- both the layoffs and reorganization -- were likely to stem from the needs of these top two managers, analysts said.

In addition to clerical and administrative positions that were eliminated, Publishing Research and Development Director Richard Seton and Frank Scholes, head of the strategic business planning group, both left the company in February.

-- dmc

System Integrators Inc.,
(916) 929-9481,
e-mail: sii@sii.com;

Quark buys into animation studio
Quark Inc., the privately held Denver company that dominates the high-end desktop page layout business with its XPress product, has purchased a significant piece of Colossal Pictures Inc. of San Francisco, makers of animated commercials, TV programs and films.

In an interview with the Rocky Mountain News of Denver, Quark Chief Executive Fred Ebrahimi said, "We respect them, we like them, we want to learn from them. Together we can get to the high end of the Internet."

Ebrahimi told the newspaper, "The Internet right now is like a word processor. It doesn't have quality of design. Together we could add that type of thing to the Internet."

Late last month, Quark was to have finally released its Immedia multimedia environment that's based on XPress (see The Cole Papers, February 1996). The authoring tool sits atop XPress; the resulting files require a viewer -- which also functions as a World-Wide Web browser -- that can run on Macintoshes or Windows-based machines.

The investment has given Quark two seats on the Colossal board of directors; Ebrahimi and Quark CFO Ken Collins will occupy them.

The 150-person Colossal is a 20-year-old company that has produced a large array of animated sequences for films and television. Among its efforts: Opening sequences for movies such as Top Gun, Natural Born Killers and Bram Stoker's Dracula, and title sequences for MTV, HBO and the TV networks.

It also has produced commercials for Schweppes and Sega, and music videos for the Grateful Dead and Bobby McFerrin.

The company also produces the animated MTV Liquid Television series and will produce a spinoff from that series, Aeon Flux. It also produces the real-time animated Moxy segments on the Cartoon Network.

In addition, Colossal has divisions that create CD-ROMs, games and Web sites.

Executives at Colossal and Quark have not come up with any concrete projects the two companies can work on together, but Dean Takahashi, a founder of Colossal, complained to the Rocky Mountain News about the length of time it sometimes has taken Colossal to create its own software to achieve specific effects.

"It no longer will be relevant to have things that gestate for three years before you get to them," Takahashi told the newspaper. "We're going to be very dependent on tools that will speed up the response time."

-- dmc

Quark Inc.,
(303) 894-8888,
e-mail: quarktech@aol.com;

Bit bucket ...
Real bits: At the Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y., Michael Kilian has been named metro editor; previously he was systems editor. ... At the Akron Beacon Journal in Ohio, Michael Carmean, formerly of Raleigh's NandO, is now director of converging technologies ... Greg Nixon, director of technology for Nixon Newspapers Inc. of Peru, Ind., is named an assistant vice president of the company and will also oversee the company's Peru Daily Tribune and Wabash (Ind.) Plain Dealer. ...

Nonprofits: At the Society of Newspaper Design of Reston, Va., Dale Peskin has been named president of the SND Foundation. The foundation's missions are to engage in education and research, and to develop and improve the capabilities of newspaper designers (or would-be designers). Peskin is deputy managing editor of the Detroit News and succeeds Howard Finberg, the senior editor for information technology at Phoenix Newspapers Inc., in the three-year job. ... At the Freedom Forum of Arlington, Va., Adam Clayton Powell III, previously director of technology studies and programs for the Forum's Media Studies Center in New York, was promoted to VP/technology programs and will head Freedom Forum activities in that area worldwide. ...

Vendor virtues: At American Computer Innovators of Amherst, Mass., Warren Ondras has been named executive vice president; Ondras is a founder of the company. Also at ACI, Rick Linneman, formerly of Dewar Information Systems Corp., has been named vice president of operations; he will head up ACI's installation and training departments. ... At the Associated Press in New York City, Chief Financial Officer Patrick O'Brien has been named to the new post of senior VP for business and finance; O'Brien has been a financial and business executive with the cooperative since 1972. Also, Executive Photo Editor Vin Alabiso has been named a VP, and Tom Brettingen, deputy director of business development and executive director of AdSEND, was appointed director of business development. ... At Linotype-Hell Co. in Hauppauge, N.Y., Edward LaGraize has resigned as president of the company "to pursue other interests." Juergen Berg, from the parent company in Germany, will serve as acting president. ... At Tribune Media Services of Chicago, Stephen Tippie has been appointed marketing director. Tippie has been the TMS product manager of Picture Network International and before that was the deputy director of corporate planning at Systems Research and Applications Corp. ...

Confabs: Intermedia World '96 will be held March 4-7 in San Francisco. Speakers include Columnist Denise Caruso, New York Times Correspondent John Markoff, Prodigy President Ed Bennett and Yahoo Co-Founder Jerry Yang. For interdetails, call (203) 840-5634. ... The Quark XPress Conference will be March 4-7 in San Francisco. Session topics include "Style Sheet Essentials," "Creating Web Pages in XPress," "Essential XTensions" and "Lunch on Your Own." For more information, call (206) 285-0305. ... Simba Information Inc.'s eighth annual Inside the Yellow Pages conference will be held March 4-5 in La Jolla, Calif. Topics include "What Advertisers Want from Yellow Pages," "The On-line Market: What it Means for Yellow Pages" and "The Electronic Product Spectrum: What Works and What Doesn't." For more information, send e-mail to simbainfo@simbanet.com or dial (203) 834-0033, ext. 160. ... Multimedia Now, "Publishers Strategies for Competing and Winning," is March 11 in New York City. Hosted by Publishers Weekly, Book Publishing Report and Multimedia Business Report, the session is said to provide "insight from publishing executives who have tested the multimedia waters and dived in." For background, call (203) 834-0033, ext. 124. ... The Computer Telephony Conference and Exhibition will be March 12-14 in Los Angeles. With 98 hours of seminars, 263 speakers and more than 340 exhibitors, a lot of stuff. Point your browser at http://www.ctexpo.com, or call (212) 691-8215. ... A one-day workshop, "How to set up shop on the World-Wide Web," will be offered March 18 in San Francisco and March 25 in Raleigh, N.C. The session will help businesses "turn browsers into buyers." Information is available by calling (303) 447-2300. ... The Ines/IFRA Training Course "Internet Publishing for Newspapers" will be held March 19-21 in Darmstadt, Germany. For details, call (011) {49} (6151) 7005-12. ... Digital Libraries '96 will be March 20-23 in Bethesda, Md. Speakers are academics and librarians from around the world. For more information, call Gary Marchionini at the University of Maryland, (301) 405-2053, or send e-mail to march@oriole.umd.ed. ... America East, the world's only newspaper conference and trade show for chocoholics, will be March 25-28 in Hershey, Pa. Topics include "Reaching Out to Elusive Audiences," "Digital Ads: Transmission and Acceptance," "Newsroom New Media: Making Sure the Internet Revolution Doesn't Pass By Editorial," "Efficient and Effective Color Correction Using Adobe Photoshop," "Archiving: What to Look For and Other Considerations," "Living in a Quark-Centric World" and "State of the Art?" For more information, point your browser at http://www.pnpa.com/ameas.htm, send e-mail to heatherp@staff.pnpa.com, or call (717) 234-4067, ext. 229. ... The IFRA Symposium "Databases -- Tools for Managers" will be held March 26-27 in Vienna, Austria. Sessions will include tutorials on newspaper applications and efficient use of databases. For more info, call (011) {49} (6151) 7005-12. ... NetWorld+Interop 96, the networking conference, will be held April 1-5 in Las Vegas. Keynote speakers include Bill Gates of Microsoft, Robert Frankenberg of Novell and Peter Nuemann of SRI International. For more information, point your browser at http://www.interop.com or call (415) 578-6900. ...

Errors and Omissions: In our last issue we identified Daniel Crough as a founder of American Computer Innovators of Amherst, Mass. The company has written to say that only Scott Killoh and Warren Ondras were founders; we regret. ... #

From THE COLE PAPERS, March 1996, Copyright © 1996, All Rights Reserved.