Dear Fellow XMPie Users,
In its second year, the XMPie Users Group is gaining significant momentum. Your Board of Directors has worked closely with XMPie to continue to grow the group, and we have been growing rapidly, with more than 120 member companies. And we have kept the membership fee affordable for this very valuable resource-at only $295 annually per company.
In the Members Only area, you will find tremendous resources, including:
- A very active forum where over 400 participants are sharing ideas every day, helping each other solve problems and networking with each other.
- A growing online library containing many valuable resources, including A Guide to Using Adobe Flash with XMPie-Based Web Sites, and great research from InfoTrends.
We just concluded our Second Annual User Group Conference in February, attended by 80 companies and nearly 200 individual attendees. More than half of the attendees joined us for the pre-conference tutorials. Attendees reported that the meeting was well worth their time, and they were quite interactive during the sessions. Logistics for next year's conference will be announced soon. Presentations from the conference are available in the Library. Click Here to view them.
Last, but not least, XMPie continues to enhance its products and is staying ahead of the integrated marketing communications market, which is good for all of us. The XMPie owners I speak with are telling me their businesses are booming. It is an exciting time!
During the conference, we held a business meeting and election to fill three expiring terms on the Board of Directors.
My fellow board members include:
- Stefan Agustsson, Vice President, Yoffi Digital Press, Inc. (USA)
Stefan has more than ten years of experience in the printing and pre-press industry. He has directed technology development for some of the country’s top color separation and commercial printing companies. In addition, Stefan spent over three years working with Scitex Corporation- (one of the world’s most revered pre-press manufacturers) as a global technical consultant. With a unique combination of technical and printing experience, Stefan offers customers of Yoffi an endless variety of solutions for unique marketing challenges.
- J. Patrick Bewley, President, Raine Media
J. Patrick Bewley is a marketing entrepreneur with a proven track record of creating growth businesses from within existing organizations. Throughout his career, Bewley has focused on the development of business and consumer marketing strategies for early adopting companies. Currently, J. Patrick Bewley is the President of Raine Media. While at Raine, he has managed the integration and rebranding of two marketing companies, established outsourced development and BPO activities in India, and successfully bootstrapped the organization by providing progressive marketing solutions to several Fortune 50 customers. Bewley joined Raine in 2004 after spending 5 years at K/P Corporation. While at K/P, Bewley led research and development. During this time, he worked closely with top leaders from Hewlett Packard and SAP Labs to evaluate market opportunities. Prior to K/P Corporation, Bewley was Chief Information Officer for LSC Marketing where he worked closely with the CEO to identify and develop new offerings. Bewley founded Network Internet Development in 1994. NID was a management consultancy focused on the development of internet based marketing strategies for manufacturing companies. He has held several board and industry advisory committee positions including the Technology Committee of the Mailing and Fulfillment Services Association.
Raine Media is a San Francisco based boutique consultancy specializing in helping its clients achieve market differentiation by building effective customer information strategies. Raine leverages its research and analytical capabilities, data technology resources, and its detailed knowledge of a wide number of industries to build and deploy innovative solutions to solve business performance challenges. Raine works primarily in financial services, health care, high technology, and insurance. Raine was founded in 1996. K/P Corporation acquired Raine in 2004 to extend its offerings in the marketing value chain.
Bewley is currently completing his graduate studies in business at Harvard Business School. He studied physics at Arkansas Tech University.
- Greg Dean, Chief Technology Officer, DME (USA)
Greg Dean is Chief Technology Officer for DME Holdings, LLC. DME is a privately-held marketing company with print services in North America and Europe. Mr. Dean is responsible for aligning the technology vision with the business vision at DME. Over the past 14 years he has engineered many of the technologies used in the suite of products and services offered by DME. He has an extensive background in commercial printing technologies. Mr. Dean attended a technology institute in Tennessee where he majored in mathematics.
- Matthew Diamond, Managing Director, Lorien Unique (UK)
- Scott Dubois, VP of Marketing, Reynolds DeWalt
- Paul McGarity, Managing Director, digitalLOGIC (Australia)
- Jacob Aizikowitz, President, XMPie, Inc.
Jacob Aizikowitz is an expert in digital printing, personalization, and computing for graphic arts. As founder of XMPie, Jacob has led the company in various roles from inception in July, 2000 to its becoming the leader in software solutions for variable data publishing and its acquisition by Xerox Corporation in November, 2006. Prior to XMPie, he was Senior Corporate Director, Systems Technologies at Scitex, where he headed R&D projects that resulted in highly innovative digital printing products. Prior to joining Scitex, Jacob was with IBM Haifa Research Lab, leading its Application, Solutions, and Services group. Jacob was part of the founding team of Electronics For Imaging (NASDAQ: EFII) where he served initially as Director R&D and later as VP Engineering. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University.
- Kimberly Meyers, Director, Marketing Communications, XMPie, Inc.
- Kathy Pescetti, President, Admail West
Since the advent of the world wide web, Admail West has evolved into a company focused on general marketing communication across multiple media, going far beyond traditional print/mail/fulfillment. Admail West has fully embraced XMPie as a platform and is moving to integrate XMPie more deeply into the core of their back end systems. Kathy is a very hands-on owner and always knows exactly what is going on at her company, including direct involvement in the initial XMPie deployment and the current extensions of that deployment. She has built Admail West from a small mail house 18 years ago to one of the largest direct mail marketing companies in California, and her company has consistently maintained high quality standards while meeting demanding requirements, across a wide range of programs and projects.
- Jeff Stewart, Vice President of Technical Services, Trekk Cross-Media.
As VP of Technical Services and a founding partner of Trekk Cross-Media, Jeffrey Stewart designs system that help clients improve processes, reduce costs and optimize their communications, sales and distribution. With a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Iowa, and graduate work in Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Illinois, Chicago, Jeff uses his extensive technological knowledge to provide creative solutions for clients’ communications needs. Areas of expertise include multi-tier client/server database integration, web-based applications and content management systems, cross-media formatting technologies and variable data communications.
A frequent speaker at industry conferences, Jeff regularly shares his expertise on topics ranging from variable data marketing and web-to-print technologies, to web content management solutions and the future of web development. Jeff is equally committed to the local community. He has served as chairman of the Rockford Chamber of Commerce as well as participated in numerous public task forces and technical advisory boards. He also helped to found the Rock River Valley Technology partners, which is focused on building a regional broadband infrastructure.
The XMPie Users Group has a threefold mission:
- To provide and encourage the exchange of information on variable data printing and personalized one-to-one direct marketing campaigns, specifically as related to the products, services, technologies, and business processes required to successfully implement these activities.
- To actively and visibly foster dialogue between XMPie, its partners and the XMPie user community regarding the direction of best practices, products, services, and/or technologies.
- To provide peer-to-peer networking opportunities that provide forums for business, marketing and technical knowledge exchange and opportunities for members to foster their professional growth.
Your participation is critical to the ability of this group to achieve this mission and continue to grow, and if you haven't already joined, I encourage you to do so today.
Both XMPie and the XMPie Users Group Board are very excited about the progress this organization continues to make. We believe it is having a significant impact not only on our individual businesses, but on the one-to-one communications market as a whole. We look forward to working together with you to make the group a success.
Please contact me if you have any questions or comments.
Stefan Agustsson
President, The XMPie User Group, Inc.