SuperConference round-robin flies over familiar territory

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. -- From "futz time" to the Year 2000, old woes to new media and a fresh bowl of Snap, Gracol, Swop -- the third annual NAA Newspaper Operations SuperConference held here Jan. 11-16 had currency and variety, even if it lacked drama and this-just-in headlines.

The week at the Fontainebleau Hotel was divided into four series: pre-press, health and safety, press and materials, post-press. Panelists in the pre-press talks were evenly split between suppliers (including Microsoft) and newspapers, with the conference's sponsor, the Newspaper Association of America, lending moderators and expertise from its staff.

Attendees hungry for the latest and greatest on the pre-press menu found appetizers here and there, but few full-course dinners were served over the first three days of the SuperCo ference -- uh, SuperConference.

The "n" wasn't silent, just missing. On Tuesday, as executives of four industry suppliers discussed the Year 2000, a foot-tall "n" in the sign over the stage behind them slowly pitched forward. The fallen letter was presented to Moderator Eric Wolferman, the NAA's senior vice president/technology and SuperConference coordinator, who called it "just a preview of what will happen on Jan. 1, 2000."

An old preview, that of a dying industry, was shooed away by NAA Chairman David Cox, the president and CEO of Cowles Media Co. of Minneapolis, who welcomed attendees Monday morning.

"I wish to announce that henceforth, as a matter of policy, all of us will stop fretting about the future of print," Cox declared. "Print is alive," he said, after pointing to 1997's 8.3 percent growth in advertising revenue and a national daily readership of 112 million adults.

A few of those millions likely would have turned the page on the keynote speaker, Thomas Landauer, a professor of psychology at the University of Colorado. Long a researcher into how the human brain acquires and retrieves knowledge, Landauer bewildered his listeners by not once mentioning newspapers. His discourse examined how productivity in the United States has declined in the last quarter century, during which time computers crept, then galloped, into almost every corner of the economy.

"I'm not against computers, I love computers," Landauer said. The problem lies in "how they're being applied." It was hard to find evidence that computers had assisted productivity, he insisted, pointing to the financial industry, which had recorded an increase in capital outlay per labor hour but no corresponding increase in output.

"The overall trend was negative," he said. "For every dollar being spent on technology, they were getting back 97 cents in increased productivity."

Where did the money go? "Futz time" was one place -- those magic moments spent trying to get a balky box to do what it's supposed to do. "The average worker in U.S. industry spends two weeks a year just learning and installing computer software," Landauer said.

In closing, he offered words near and dear to systems buyers everywhere: "What I'm advocating is to somehow write a contract that insists that not only that this thing go fast, but that afterward, things go more productively."

Still running on Jan. 1, 2000
Few things threaten productivity like a system shutdown, so warding off the Year 2000 demon was a topic touched on more than once.

"I don't think the world is going to stop on Jan. 1, 2000," said Johnny Thøgerson, vice president of marketing research and product design for CCI Europe of Aarhus, Denmark, and Marietta, Ga. "Some people will have to work late hours to have things cleaned up, but I don't think the world will end," he said, noting that his company's products don't have dates embedded in code and so are prepared for 1/1/2000.

Thoegerson and other suppliers on the pre-press industry outlook panel suggested that integration and customization posed the greatest problems. CText systems are set for the millennium, said Larry Moore, CEO of the publishing solutions supplier based in Ann Arbor, Mich. "The bigger challenge is finding out what customers integrated to over the last 13 or 14 years."

Also a challenge is serving all customers. Software Consulting Services has so many systems on so many platforms, said Richard Cichelli, president of the Nazareth, Pa.-based company, that "we have 24 iterations of fix sets we want to send out."

Sites that have yet to plumb the depths of Y2K, or need a mile marker to identify their progress, can use the steps to Y2K compliance laid out by John Iobst, the NAA's director of advanced computer science.

In his presentation at the Sunday session, Coping with the Year 2000 Computer Problem, Iobst first flagged what he called "the single biggest gotcha" with Y2K.

Every PC (not Macintosh) has a Bios, or identity file, which must be upgraded, he explained. Because the date of manufacture has nothing to do with the creation date of the Bios, "the bottom line is that every PC in your shop will have to be checked" -- do not assume that machines made after a certain date are in compliance.

Then he described a stairway to Y2K heaven, with awareness occupying the first step. All top managers must buy into the problem, pledge support for solving it and create a task force to do the job, he said.

That task force must assess all needs, starting with an inventory of all systems, a mammoth task (Iobst said Knight Ridder has 6000 software systems to examine). Armed with that, the team should seek assurances from suppliers -- and business partners whose systems interact with its machines -- that all will be Y2K ready.

Once the scope of the project is detailed, the task force must develop resource needs, which may include holding on to vital people, whatever the cost. "Finding resources in the outside world is almost impossible now," Iobst said.

Next, he said, is to plan how to upgrade or convert systems, then test that they are in fact Y2K compliant. This can be delicate, as "once you've cleaned up a database, you don't want to go back and reinfect it." One way to prevent that is to have users properly trained, not only in what they will use that's new, but also how the conversion is supposed to progress.

Lastly, he warned, have a fall back plan in case the dreaded day comes and you're upended by the unexpected beyond your control -- "some tiny little thing that worked fine in your environment that didn't work in their environment."

Going the ink route
The final act of publishing -- getting on the press -- is being made easier by time, practice and promising products.

Some nuggets: