"Dynamite comes in small packages" was the motto for the "drupa think tank" at Print 05 in Chicago, but at Ipex to be staged in Birmingham from 4 to 11 April 2006, the presentation will be twice the size. Eleven young companies from Belgium, Canada, Germany and Poland will provide living proof of the publishing industry's innovative drive at the drupa stand in Hall 7 B50. The drupa innovation parc's (dip) sponsoring partner at Print 05, Gradual Software, will continue in its role at Ipex. The Belgian company has already attracted plenty of international attention with its workflow solutions.

"In Chicago already, the drupa innovation parc on tour served as a good springboard into the international business arena," says Manuel Mataré, the drupa Project Director, summing up the dip premiere last year. "And that's just what we had in mind when we at drupa launched the dip. We are offering young, creative companies a chance to present themselves under the drupa umbrella. We in turn get to showcase drupa as the platform for new global solutions."

Visitors to Ipex who are interested in exciting forward-looking applications for print and media should be sure not to miss out on the "drupa innovation parc powered by Gradual Software" in Hall 7. Belgian software manufacturer Gradual Software will be touting Caslon Flow, a software tool capable of automating entire production chains. Gradual Software has made a point of ensuring that even users with limited IT expertise can set up and run the system.

Peter Camps, CEO of Gradual Software, explains his support for the dip thus: "As a young and fast-growing company it is extremely important to be able to focus on our message and customers when visiting a major trade show. As participants of the dip during Print '05, we experienced how easy it was to do just that; dip took care of the complete organisation and provided us with a perfect platform to bring our message home. At Ipex 2006, we choose to participate and sponsor dip again because Ipex will be an even more important show for us. At Ipex, we will release our new SWITCH product family and bring tailored automation to professional publishing workflows. Once again, we believe dip at Ipex will make that so much easier."

Making their debut in the drupa innovation parc will be the Canadian company Polkadots as well as the German businesses Covum AG, Compart Systemhaus, trivet.net and b-nova. These new participants will be unveiling innovative solutions in the fields of prepress workflows as well as Web2print, JDF and XML. "We are very excited about being part of the drupa innovation parc. And we have high expectations - we hope the dip will provide us with a launch pad for expanding our activities on the Anglo-Saxon markets," comments Wolfgang Boretius of trivet.net. "It's really great that we get to cooperate with the other dip exhibitors right from the run-up to the fair. That way visitors can look forward to an excellent insight into how Web2print and prepress workflows dovetail."

Stepping out once again will also be the German companies Callas Software, Kinetik, base-t and the Polish software whizzes from the ACC HSH Group. The mix of exhibitors makes the drupa innovation parc the hotspot for progressive new ideas. A conscious decision was made not to have a stage and lineup of events at the dip. Bernd Zipper, dip coordinator and head of ZIPCON Consulting, explains that, "It's been our experience that large-scale talks don't do the dip justice. The drupa innovation parc is an international communications platform for forging contacts between businesses and a place to discover new ideas. For some of the exhibitors (base-t, Covum AG, trivet.net and b-nova), Ipex will also be their first participation in an international fair."

After Ipex 2006, the "drupa innovation parc powered by Gradual Software" can also be seen at All in Print China, to be staged in Shanghai from 14 to 17 June 2006, and IGAS 2007 which opens in Tokyo from 21 to 27 September 2007.

Short profiles of the various companies:

Gradual Software
Digital processes, the World Wide Web and related standards such as XML have had an enormous impact on the broad publishing community, and have radically altered the economics of publishing. The industry has fully recognized the necessity of production automation and has started along the path towards its implementation. However the tools currently available fall short of addressing the industry's needs. The productivity gains required by the increasingly competitive environment can no longer be achieved solely by monolithic systems focusing on islands of automation. The industry needs to build pathways to connect these islands and create a unified world between disparate systems. Gradual Software will offer affordable desktop solutions to help establish and maintain these connections within a climate of constant change. Gradual's solutions will usually be deployed in small increments, offering the flexibility to integrate a major new technology step-by-step rather than in large-scale hit-or-miss implementations. Hence the company name: Gradual Software. Gradual's automation solutions will benefit all of the participants in the publishing workflow including content originators (such as authors and designers), content processors (such as editors, designers and layout artists), brand owners (such as publishers and marketing departments) and service providers (such as printers).
www.gradual.com

AC & C HSH Group
In 1998, first applications using new format of data: PDF. PdfOrganizer - the first native imposition software on the market, Pdf-Personalizer (currently PdfTattoo) - software for personalization of PDF data, PdfPairer - the first automated page pairing solution natively using PDF. All these applications were awarded with HotPicks during Seybold San Francisco in 1999. The PDF applications after merging of companies became a part of PdfTools suite. PuzzleFlow was invented mainly for everyday prepress tasks in larger production system. The modular architecture allows to operate on set of tools with common environment. The variety of processing engines is a powerful set including: format conversions, preflight, geometry correction, document optimization, ultra fast imposition, personalization and versionalization, ICC based color management, separation and recombination, trapping.
www.acchsh.com

base-t
base-t GmbH & Co. KG is a young company specialized in developing solutions for the print and media business. Presenting FILEBOX, the modular workflow-system for webbased job-management in the print and media business. Some key features of FILEBOX are handling of all known data-transfer standards , integrating existent infrastructure, Jobtickets and status notifications. The solution is available for ASP or local server.
www.base-t.de

b-nova
b-nova, cologne, is specialized in developing standard or customized print and fax on demand-solutions. With our own developed products "bp-talk-server" and the services of our internet platform "sofortpost.de" we are able to supply and manage the whole process of mailing. b-nova products do not require any special OS. You can use for example SAP/UNIX, ERP/AIX, Solaris or LEXWARE/Windows. Leveraging ten years of experience in lean printing software-mechanisms, b-nova is able to deliver the most flexible tools for printing automation and direct mailing services using common formats like Postscript, PDF and AFP.
www.b-nova.de

callas software
callas software GmbH, Berlin, founded in 1995 by Olaf Druemmer, specializes in software for the analysis and processing of PDF files. Acrobat plugs-ins, command line tools and programming libraries from callas software preflight, correct, color convert and optimize PDFs for print and online publishing, document management and archiving. callas software technology has been licensed by leading vendors, including Adobe, Helios, Hewlett Packard, Mitsubishi Paper Mills and Xerox. callas software actively supports industry standards and has been participating in ISO, CIP4, the European Color Initiative and the Ghent PDF Workgroup for more than five years.
www.callas.com

Covum AG
Covum AG launches their "Controlled Publishing Solutions". Document-Creation, Asset-, Request- and Process-Management are essential parts of this system. CovumDesigner turns Webbrowsers into Designapplications for making high-quality Documents. All publications will be processed to various Output Formats by Covum Exporter (Print-PDF, HTML). Controlled processes is the new keyword for streamlined publishing.
www.covum.com

Compart Systemhaus
Founded in 1992, the Compart Systemhaus GmbH is a well-established manufacturer and provider of software components and services for document management and output management systems. Compart's products are based on a document model which is a proprietary generic development. Documents of all common formats can be converted accurately to any target format. The Compart filters are available for the following formats: AFP, MO:DCA, AFP Mixed Mode, PDF, PCL, Metacode/DJDE, LCDS/DJDE, IPDS, IJPDS, SAP ALF + OTF, RTF, Linemode, Lotus Notes CDR, XML, SVG, WMF, DjVu, and all major raster formats like TIFF, JPEG, GIF etc. Additionally, a preprocessor is available for Microsoft Office application formats. Based on the architecture Compart offers components and products that display, convert and format data streams for all kinds of archiving and output management systems.
www.compart.com

Kinetik
Kinetik offers solutions in the area online printand marketing automation. Besides their own solution like the online individualizing solution iBright, Kinetik offers standard solutions like the digital asset management system MediaBeacon. Kinetik is focused on Java J2EE conforming web-applications. All solutions offered by Kinetik follow this standard, so Kinetik is predestined to integrate end enhance the functionality to create comprehensive online media systems. Right now Kinetik offers various extensions to MediaBeacon, like OPIX® Datamigration, extended search functionality, a SOAP WebService Interface and a module that handles duplicates in MediaBeacon. Besides these extensions Kinetik shows various uses of iBright in the range of retail advertising and marketing, creation and processing of mailings and the integration with Online CRM systems. These offerings will be completed by solutions for trans-actional print and a solution for online address-management focused on mailing production.
www.kinetik.de

LearLearn4print - Printpromotion
The e-learning platform learn4print.com is the online place to go for fundamental knowledge for the printing industry. Developed in cooperation with machinery manufacturers and specialist authors from the printing and paper industries, the up-to-the-minute learning materials take a hands-on approach to pre-press and printing, vividly presented in animated modules. Support is offered by a moderated expert forum, a glossary of terms and several specialist tutors. The integrated training platform provides a wealth of tips and instructions on how students can put into practice what they have learned online in their own job environment. On completion of the courses offered, students receive a certificate. Learn4print.com is available in English and German.
www.learn4print.com

Polkadots Software
Polkadots Software Inc is a software engineering company specializing in the development, support and integration of prepress workflow solutions. Leveraging many years of production experience Polkadots created PrePage-it the automated, secure, workflow server that can ntegrate and upgrade any OEM version f the Harlequin RIP.Polkadots now offers highly productive, yet cost-effective, solutions for commercial printers, newspapers as well as magazine publishers. Polkadots is committed to providing the printing and publishing industry with unbeatable products at unbeatable value.
www.polkadots.ca

trivet.net
trivet.net is a web-to-print system, which enables each company to personalise and to order print media via the internet. As a "Ready To Go" application trivet.net is very easy to install and to operate. trivet.net uses consequently PDF-documents, so it's suitable for a wide range of appliances. trivet.net is a small developer company in germany and specialized on ERP and Web-to-Print-Systems.
www.trivet.net