FM Future is a business development and communications consultancy dedicated to helping innovators grow their businesses through the power of thought leadership, storytelling and communication.
Following the success of the inaugural FuturePrint Virtual Summit in June, the second edition of the forward-thinking event will take place over five days from the 12-16 October. The first day of the event will be dedicated to ‘Young Guns in Print’, celebrating print’s young leaders, highlighting entrepreneurs and innovation, and exploring how to attract, retain, and empower young talent in print.
During the June summit, more than 55% of attendees were from the 18-35 category, leading event organizers FM Future to build a day of targeted content into the speaker programme that appeals to and inspires younger people in the industry. The entire first day will feature presentations and interviews featuring under 35s in a broad range of roles, sectors and locations, as well as in-depth panels exploring the opportunities and challenges facing young people in today’s industry.
Marcus Timson of FM Future adds “We were very happy to see that young people made up a significant proportion of attendees during the first summit, and wanted to ensure that our mission to provide free, engaging and valuable content extended to the future leaders of the print industry. The line-up of young talent is fantastic, and as well as being useful to young people, the Young Guns in Print content programme is sure to be incredibly beneficial to seasoned print professionals too – it’s an amazing way to kick off five days of insight and innovation.”
Young Guns in Print features speakers from Landa, Bluetree Group, Cambridge University, Xaar, Solimar Systems, Epson Europe, Avery Dennison, Print.com and many more. The Young Guns in Print programme as well as the FuturePrint Virtual Summit schedule in can be viewed here. Registrations for the event are also going on here.
2023 promises an interesting ride for print in India
Indian Printer and Publisher founded in 1979 is the oldest B2B trade publication in the multi-platform and
multi-channel IPPGroup. While the print and packaging industries have been resilient in the past 33 months since the pandemic lockdown of 25 March 2020, the commercial printing and newspaper industries have yet to recover their pre-Covid trajectory.
The fragmented commercial printing industry faces substantial challenges as does the newspaper industry.
While digital short-run printing and the signage industry seem to be recovering a bit faster, ultimately
their growth will also be moderated by the progress of the overall economy. On the other hand book
printing exports are doing well but they too face several supply-chain and logistics challenges.
The price of publication papers including newsprint has been high in the past year while availability is diminished by several mills shutting down their publication paper and newsprint machines in the past four years. Indian paper mills are also exporting many types of paper and have raised prices for Indian printers. To some extent, this has helped in the recovery of the digital printing industry with its on-demand short-run and low-wastage paradigm.
Ultimately digital print and other digital channels will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future. For instance, there is no alternative to a rise in textbook consumption but this segment will only reach normality in the next financial year beginning on 1 April 2023.
Thus while the new normal is a moving target and many commercial printers look to diversification, we believe that our target audiences may shift and change. Like them, we will also have to adapt with agility to keep up with their business and technical information needs.
Our 2023 media kit is ready, and it is the right time to take stock and reconnect with your potential markets and customers. Print is the glue for the growth of liberal education, new industry, and an emerging economy. We seek your participation in what promises to be an interesting ride.
