Initially only for Atex users, APSU seeks broader mandate

NORFOLK, Va. -- What does a users group do when the membership roster shrinks, when attendance at yearly conferences falls by two-thirds in a decade, and when cynics are singing ditties about "Next year we'll meet in a phone booth"?

Rather than wither away, the Atex Newspaper Users Group -- ANUG -- 18 months ago rechristened itself the Association of Publishing Systems Users. Now it is pursuing an ambitious expansion program for 1998. The goal is to become an umbrella organization for other pre-press users groups, providing joint services and putting on combined yearly conferences that will double as a pre-press trade show.

Jim Perine of the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch began a one-year stint as APSU president during the annual meeting Sept. 21-25 at the Waterside Marriott here.

"Attendance is about even with last year [close to 150 if you count vendors and one-day attendees from close-by papers]. That isn't good enough. That's what's driving our attempt to bring in other groups. Vendor participation this year was fantastic, but we've got to bring in more people. We're not trying to take over, we're only trying to share our organizational experience and our proven ability to put on good meetings."

Perine said his vision for future meetings is to have several users groups convene in the same city, with two to three days in a convention-center hotel devoted to sessions of industry-wide interest, plus a mini trade show. This would be followed by one to two days where groups would split off to conduct supplier-specific meetings, including the ever-popular "supplier meets the users" sessions.

Perine said some user groups might choose to book blocks of rooms for their members in hotels away from the main gathering, and to conduct their private sessions in those hotels instead of at the convention center.

This year nearly 20 suppliers had representatives and equipment at the convention center connected to the Norfolk Marriott. After a short opening session at noon Saturday, the rest of the day and Sunday morning were devoted to sessions hosted by third-party companies.

The concept seemed to work well, especially when suppliers used the session to let one or more customers talk about their experiences with the maker's equipment. Those sessions whetted interest in the products, which could then be examined more closely in tire-kicking sessions by small groups in the rooms where the companies had their equipment.

Perine said that, while the concept worked well this year, "the key is more people -- we've got to get more people in here."

Suppliers made it clear that they shared that sentiment. Bill Stroud, director of technical support for Unisys Corp.'s publishing solutions division of Blue Bell, Pa., rattled off the long list of competing trade shows: the NAA SuperConference, Seybold New York, America East, NEXPO, Seybold San Francisco, IFRA, America West.

"We can't just do all these things, to be part of every beauty contest that comes along," Stroud said. "Preparing for and attending each event involves a major commitment of time and money. Greater attendance at APSU certainly would be a consideration in our level of participation."

Allen Miller, vice president of marketing at Atex Media Solutions Inc. of Bedford, Mass., said there was no question that Atex was disappointed with this year's APSU attendance.

"Making APSU an industry group is an interesting idea that could have side benefits; it changes our perspective on our relations with the group, but that may not be bad," Miller said. "A case-study approach to general-interest sessions could be very good -- how did you do this, how did you decide that?

"Informational sessions like that may be more useful than classes on [Microsoft] Word macros or UNIX short courses, which you can get at the local community college."

No rock throwing
From all reports, the supplier presentation at this year's Atex Meets the Users session was well received, unlike some years when the Q&A could have been subtitled "The Ritual Flogging of the Vendor."

President and Chief Executive Larry Mihalchik and other Atex executives went through a business update, an analysis of market trends and a rundown of product strategies to take advantage of those trends, plus reports on sales, installations and customer support.

Mihalchik outlined why he believes a major market opportunity exists in the global newspaper business, and how Atex Media Solutions, spun off from Sysdeco last winter, has put in place a structure and a product direction to take full advantage of that opportunity.

Ken Clover, a 15-year veteran of ANUG/APSU and a former ANUG president who retired this summer as an assistant managing editor at the Detroit Free Press, said, "I thought what Larry and his people put together for Atex Meets the Users was exceptional --- it sounds like a winner. I sure hope so."

There have been signs that this was more than just the every-other-year honeymoon given to the latest incarnation of Atex, and that customers are showing their approval with new orders as well as with polite applause. In October, Atex announced the sale of Enterprise advertising front-end systems to four E.W. Scripps Co. newspapers -- the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Daily Camera in Boulder, Colo. and Evansville (Ind.) Courier.

Then there were Thomson Newspapers commitments for Enterprise, DewarView editorial and Release 5 classified pagination installations at four Wisconsin dailies and several weeklies.

Plus, Ottaway Newspapers continued its commitment to Atex by buying Classified Pagination systems for its 20 newspapers. Atex already is installing editorial and advertising systems at the Ottaway sites in a three-year, $10 million-plus project that began more than a year ago.

These contracts reinforce the trend toward suppliers' receiving long-term, multiproperty commitments from newspaper chains, supplanting the paper-by-paper selection processes of the past. Serving large corporate clients requires a lot of resources; if the trend continues, it will be time to bury earlier predictions by an industry pundit that companies with more than 75 employees are doomed to failure in the pre-press industry.

(Atex has added nearly 50 employees this year; its head count is just under 400.)

Looking beyond current versions of products, Miller said after the meeting that newspapers face a number of problems: new media as a separate operation, composition systems that tie content and form together, systems that don't have all content in digital form, and advertising systems that lack comprehensive sales and marketing tools to build ad revenue for traditional and new products.

"We're pleased with our success and market acceptance," Miller said, "but we believe there's room for us to offer even better and bigger solutions to the industry, ones that would support a fully integrated operation, including new products and new markets."

Since spring Atex has rebuffed all attempts to pin down exactly what new or enhanced products are on the drawing board. This has led to great frustration in the supplier-watching press, where many of us have assailed companies for "selling futures" -- pre-announcing products that sometimes never made it out of the development lab -- but that doesn't stop us from incessantly badgering suppliers to spill the beans about what's on -- or over -- the horizon.

Some customers have immediate problems to solve, which is why there was a full room for a session devoted to squeezing additional performance out of editorial and advertising systems that still are running with the venerable J-11 processor.

Halfway through the roundtable discussion, Perine burst through the door with this announcement: "I just saw Ron Stephens [the Atex vice president for sales] in the hallway and told him there was good news and bad news. The good news is that there's a session about Atex products going on that has filled every chair and is standing-room only.

"The bad news is that it's a J-11 session!"

Judi Fox, head of Atex customer support, replied: "Some of us don't think that's bad news."

Party 'til 1999
The topic that seemed to draw the most interest in Norfolk was the Year 2000 conundrum and how to cope with it.

Atex has been sharing lists of its products with customers since spring, indicating which ones will be allowed to expire with the turn of the century, which ones will be brought into Y2K compliance, and how customers can get into line for upgrades.

One area of concern for several users was News Layout, an editorial text-and-rules pagination system that dates to the early 1980s. Atex, which had indicated earlier that the product was a goner in the 21st century, responded to numerous requests from customers by changing course and saying it would undertake an effort to make the PC version of News Layout Y2K-compliant.

However, Atex made it clear that this wasn't going to be a solo effort. The project "is contingent upon user participation, particularly regarding the testing of this product -- including user involvement in the development of a test plan," and Atex reserved the right to drop the project "should sufficient user resources not be forthcoming."

News Layout users who were not in Norfolk should direct inquiries to century@atex.com.

How important do customers view Y2K? Well, the users group gave its Atex Employee of the Year award to Gary Young, who is heading the Year 2000 program.

The Sully award, given each year to a users-group member for lifetime service to the group, went to Clover, the former ANUG president.

Finally, salient thoughts: